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German policy makers and scholars have repeatedly referred to the United States’ higher education system as a model for improving the quality of universities in Germany.
Starting at this debate about a potential "Americanization” of German higher education policy this dissertation focuses on the introduction of new bachelor’s programs at German universities and analyzes whether these new degrees resemble their American counterparts.
The theoretical basis for this study is the “Varieties of Capitalism” (VoC) approach by Hall and Soskice, which argues that firms in coordinated market economies (CMEs) such as Germany need employees with specific skills, while employees in liberal market economies (LMEs) like the United States have to acquire general skills for the job market. Assuming that new German bachelor’s degrees are aimed at providing graduates with more general skills, the question of whether the introduction of these new degrees represents a convergence with American higher education policy and whether this indicates a shift towards a more liberal American-style market economy constitutes the main part of this study.