The modern university debate has been going on since the Federal Republic of Germany came into being in 1949, but it has reached a new intensity in the last several years. Many entrenched German traditions like free college tuition and automatic acceptance to a university with just an Abitur may be changing. Reluctantly forced into rethinking a system that is crumbling under its own weight, German universities and technical colleges, also faced with a growing budget crunch, are looking at new ways of selecting students and paying for higher education in the land that invented the modern research university. Proponents say this would force German students to complete their studies in less time. Detractors claim the opposite would be the case, as the students would have to take more time to raise money for their fees, and fewer young people would have the chance to go to college.
German students are notorious for long study times.
Another radical departure from past German practice comes in the form of a proposal to have each of Germany's universities select its own students. This practice, the norm in the US, is now quite rare in Germany. A small Bavarian college of business administration recently became the first German college to have the right to select the students for admission. Some German universities, including Ingolstadt, have become increasingly dissatisfied with the caliber of students admitted through the ZVS process. They have advocated a new method similar to American university admission practices, in which students apply to a specific college which then itself determines the students that it will accept.