What is higher education to contemporary students in Germany?

Abstract

The purpose, aim and goals of higher education itself have been discussed and researched in the context of massified and marketised higher education in Germany, with a focus mainly on higher education national policies or the view of faculty staff. By shifting the perspective instead to the students, this article asks what higher education means to them nowadays. This study is based on 95 interviews with German graduate students from three disciplines (i.e. business administration/management, medicine and musicology) and it offers a typology of what students understand as the purpose of higher education. Six types were reconstructed from the empirical material, along three main lines of higher education's purpose (i.e. occupational, personal and societal). This paper also shows how the chosen discipline becomes more salient for the student's perception of higher education purpose than their social background. This questions previous research that found strong ties between instrumentalism and social background in higher education. This paper also demonstrates that social differences do matter in their egalitarian or elitist variation of understanding within non‐instrumentalist types. Overall, this study illustrates how heterogenous contemporary higher education purpose has become, which mirrors a further general differentiation in higher education.

Strategies of Social Reproduction: Medical Students from Germany in Central and Eastern Europe from a Centre–Periphery Perspective

“…On the basis of this symbolic weakness and the underwhelming reception of their diplomas in Germany, the students develop and implement measures and strategies to counterbalance and counteract these symbolic deficiencies in order to bring their medical profile into line with the expectations of the centre to which they wish to return (Schäfer 2023). These measures include an emphasis on better practical rather than theoretical training and extra-curricular activities and qualifications from other institutions, preferably from the centre, and the positioning of their work profile and studies within an internationalised trajectory.…”

“…As medicine and the position of a CORVINUS JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY VOL. 14 (2023) 2 doctor is a practical matter in comparison to other studies/positions (Schäfer 2023), it is particularly easy and promising to reframe studies in this direction. Andrea explained how superficial perceptions or stereotypes about studying medicine abroad are followed by different impressions on the ground in Germany.…”