ABSTRACT
The signing of the Bologna Declaration in 1999 by 29 European ministers of education ushered in a period of fundamental change for the German higher education system, sparking and advancing important new processes. The Bologna process remains a work in progress; any assessment of what has been gained or lost can only cover developments to date. The Bologna Declaration’s central aims, arising from and linked to the preceding Sorbonne Declaration of 1998, relate in particular to the “creation of the European area of higher education as a key way to promote citizens’ mobility and employability and the Continent’s overall development”. The implementation of Bologna was one of the factors driving this change. The transformation of a number of career fields into graduate professions calls for new types and formats of qualifications and in turn for novel routes into and within academia.
