Since its initiation in 1999, the Bologna process has led to the most fundamental reform in the history of the German higher education system. The reform introduced the two-tier study system and the external quality assurance of new study programs through accreditation. The book presents results of an empirical study which aims at identifying and categorizing the main difficulties impeding the implementation of the Bologna reform at German higher education institutions. To this end, quality requirements which the accreditation agencies had imposed on Higher Education Institutions in Lower Saxony as part of conditional accreditations of study programs were encoded and analyzed in the course of a content analysis of 1380 accreditation decisions. Also, faculty, staff and students actively involved in the Bologna reform process were invited to answer a questionnaire on their perception of the structural reform of the German study programs.
