If we compare our current landscapes of higher education to the systems 50 years ago we will face a lot of changes. A remarkable expansion has taken place worldwide (Meyer et al. 1977). Since the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s several EU member states have started fundamental reforms in order to find answers for challenging new claims. Federal state policies and politics started to reshape higher education by and within international contexts such as the European Union and in their own national contexts. An important part of these policies and politics refer to differentiation between higher education institutions. In this paper I will concentrate on differentiation in higher education in Britain and in Germany. Policies and politics concerning differentiation of higher education institutions in Britain and Germany comprise four comparable areas: first, the alignment of different higher education institutions by the accreditation of polytechnics and colleges as universities in Britain and the introduction of new courses of study and new degrees, the Bachelor and Master in Germany. Second, the introduction of tuition fees in both countries. The third area of differentiation is the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in Britain and the “Excellence Initiative”, a mainly state-funded program of creating elite universities in Germany. And finally, fourth, the introduction of league tables in Britain and university rankings in Germany. These policies are embedded partly in the European process of harmonization of higher education (Bologna process). The paper’s objective is to detect probable effects on social recruitment of these policies and politics concerning differentiation in higher education in Britain and in Germany. Consequently, the research question pursued is: Do these policies and politics concerning differentiation in higher education in Britain and in Germany enable a more diverse and socially inclusive recruitment of participants in higher education? Questions of social inclusion and exclusion in higher education are still treated marginally (Teichler 2008). Nevertheless there is a debate on the question whether expansion in higher education led to diversion of working class members to institutions of lower status or to their inclusion into universities (Arun/Gamoran/Shavit 2007) with country specific studies (for Britain: Cheung/Egerton 2007, for Germany: Mayer/Müller/Pollak 2007). The theoretical framework for this paper’s assessment of policies and politics concerning differentiation refers to basic concepts of social inequality of classes in education (Collins 1979, Boudon 1974, Bourdieu 1984, and Lucas 2001).

The method applied in this paper is a theoretical argumentation relying on basic concepts of social inequality in education. Against the background of Collins’ (1979) explanation of stratification, Boudon’s (1974) concept of rational choice, Bourdieu’s (1984) terms of cultural and social capital and habitus and Lucas’ (2001) observation of efficiently maintained inequality (EMI) the policies of alignment of higher education institutions with different status, the introduction fees in both countries, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in Britain and the so called Excellence Initiative in Germany and league tables or rankings in both countries are being assessed concerning their effects on inclusion or exclusion of underprivileged people in higher education. The analysis needs to be mainly theoretical since these policies are recently imposed and very few empirical data on their effects on social recruitment exist. Nevertheless, a collection of the existing empirical data will be presented too.

Results indicate that current policies of differentiation tend to enforce unequal social recruitment in both countries since policies of differentiation contribute rather to competition than to diversity. Due to transformations of the welfare states in Britain and in Germany higher education in both countries is dismissed mainly by decreasing funds in relation to the extended tertiary education systems. Consequently higher education is exposed to marketization. The lost of autonomy in the education system supports stratification since participation in higher education becomes increasingly important for further life chances and socio-economic status. One might conclude that the analysed policies express a kind of convergence of formerly more different higher education systems of Britain and Germany.