To someone in the UK, a university education in Germany must seem to go on for an eternity. British students typically graduate three or four years earlier than their German counterparts, who take about six years to complete their “diploma”. Lengthy first degrees in physics are favoured in many countries throughout Europe because they allow students to gain a thorough theoretical training. But governments across the continent are now dismantling these degrees in favour of the “Anglo-Saxon” system, in which a three- or four-year bachelors degree is followed by optional masters qualifications. This would allow students to graduate and enter the job market more quickly, a prospect that appeals to governments eager to improve efficiency and increase economic competitiveness.

This changeover in degree structure was agreed in Bologna last June by ministers from 29 European countries. The so-called “Bologna Declaration” is a binding commitment between countries to bring coherence to the myriad of university-teaching systems across Europe, and must be implemented by 2010. Currently most countries in the European Union have, or are experimenting with, two-tier curricula in at least part of their higher-education system. Germany and Austria have introduced new bachelors and masters degrees on a voluntary basis alongside diplomas. Meanwhile, France and Italy (see box) are rearranging existing curricula into first and postgraduate stages.

“There is no other way,” says Andreas Wieck, a physicist at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. “The infrastructure exists, we just adapt the system.” Wieck hopes that the new structure will make life easier for students who want to go overseas and that it will attract more students from abroad. This should help to increase Germany’s presence in the increasingly global market for students, which is currently dominated by English-speaking countries. And more foreign students could go some way to reducing Germany’s shortage of physicists, which is a problem the world over but particularly acute in Germany.

“Within the last five years the number of kids who take up physics studies has gone down by a factor of two or three,” says Claus Gößling of Dortmund University. Although this decline has stalled recently, hopes are not high. “We have to be prepared for only 500 to 600 PhDs per year. We will need ‘green cards’ for physicists,” says Rainer Kassing of the German Physical Society (DPG).

Physics in the real world

The Anglo-Saxon model is more naturally suited to university education believes Jacques Lewiner, dean of science at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris. He feels that France’s students receive a broader education at school, but get a worse deal at degree level. “In the Anglo-Saxon system, people learn a lot by themselves,” he says, “and are not taught everything in class. They build up theory only after learning from experience, which is what happens in real life.”

French universities are introducing more applied classes. In the past, electromagnetism, for example, would typically have been taught by starting with Maxwell’s equations. “This year,” says Lewiner, “the class in my ecole started off with a very basic question: ‘You all have a mobile phone in your pocket. How does it work?’ From this the students learn wave propagation.”

Some French institutions have also introduced tuition for students, along Anglo-Saxon lines. “I believe this is very positive because it reduces the time spent in formal classes and allows students more time to study by themselves,” says Lewiner, who adds that tuition is set to become even more commonplace in the future.

Dissenting voices

Not everyone, however, is happy about the changes confronting European universities.

“I find it a pity,” says Nobel-prize winner Gerard ‘t Hooft, a theoretical physicist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. “I think that the Dutch system [in which people graduate only after having studied up to masters level], is superior to the Anglo-Saxon system and in my opinion our courses are of a higher level.” He believes that at secondary school, students in the US get an education in subjects such as geography and history that is considerably less thorough than it is here. “Consequently,” he says, “it makes sense there to spend a lot of time on those subjects in the bachelor’s phase. But why should we assume that our students know as little as students in the Anglo-Saxon system and why should we lower our level to theirs?”

Vincent Icke, an astronomer at Netherland’s University of Leiden, describes the change over as “the first step on the way to the total infantilizing of university education.” He is unhappy that students will have the option of leaving university after three years. “This will effectively lop off the active contact with academic research,” he says.

Michael Kobel, a physicist at Bonn University, recognizes that a German diploma takes too long to complete, but does not think it needs to be scrapped. A tight reign at Bonn means that students graduate on average half a year earlier than students at other German institutions. The university also runs an international physics programme in which all courses are taught in English, something that was originally designed to attract students from abroad but has turned out to be popular among German students as well. When they graduate, they can also choose to be given a document, written in English, which states clearly that the masters degree is contained in the German diploma. The idea is that this document will avoid the usual misconception among non-Germans that a diploma is nothing more than a bachelor’s degree.

Although the DPG still believes that the diploma should remain the nation’s professional qualification, the German Science Council, however, backs the introduction of bachelors and masters curricula. In the past German companies wanted physicists who had obtained a diploma, since it meant that they were highly qualified. But now industry is not so fussy. Siemens, one of Germany’s big employers of physicists, is happy to recruit any physics graduate, whether they hold a bachelors, masters or diploma. A personnel officer from the company says that Siemens supports young people who have an Anglo-Saxon-style qualification, but that they still employ physicists with a diploma because “we know about their abilities”.

Lewiner supports this sentiment. He feels that diversity should be maintained within European education and that it is unhealthy to switch completely to one system. “The Anglo-Saxon and continental traditions can learn from one another,” he says.