Felix Grigat, a representative of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers, said that changes introduced under the programme to harmonise European higher education systems had undermined institutional autonomy and universities¡¯ ability to educate students to high standards.

Degrees were now more skills-orientated than focused on developing critical thinking, he argued at a British Council conference in Wildbad Kreuth, near Munich, on 3 May, which compared the German and UK higher education systems.

¡°Employers complain that students are immature, unprepared and not comparable with former graduates,¡± Mr Grigat, editor of the association¡¯s magazine, Forschung & Lehre (Research & Teaching), argued. ¡°Students and staff are also complaining about a move away from an academic experience to one concerned with skills.¡±

The changes undermined the traditional Humboldtian values on which German universities were based, he said, with studies centred on ¡°competence¡± in a narrow field of knowledge, rather than immersion in a diverse range of academic studies.

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Mr Grigat added: ¡°This notion of ¡®competence¡¯...is only about markets, not about developing what is special about the person.¡±

This shift had led many academics to claim that ¡°Humboldt is dead¡±, he said, while ¡°a more economical approach to universities¡± was now prevalent.

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Claiming Bologna had failed in Germany, he concluded: ¡°It has missed all its objectives ¨C student mobility has not increased, study time has not decreased and employers complain about graduate skills.¡±

Roland Sturm, professor of political science at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, said Bologna had added an extra layer of bureaucracy for academics.

¡°German universities suffer from a huge amount of admin already and there is no one to relieve us of it,¡± he lamented.

However, Winfried Schulze, director of the Mercator Research Center, the University Alliance Metropolis Ruhr, said the changes in German higher education were not down to Bologna.

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¡°We are responding to something that has been happening for 30 to 40 years ¨C the massification of universities,¡± he said. ¡°We cannot educate 40 per cent of people and offer the same education that we gave to 5 per cent. Those who graduate from these ¡®competence¡¯ universities are not doing any worse than those from more traditional educational universities.¡±

jack.grove@tsleducation.com