The transformation of spaces devoid of higher education into an academic landscape. The comprehensive university plan of North Rhine-Westphalia, 1965-1985.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Ute Schneider
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 289783703

By investigating the case of the comprehensive university plan, initiated in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1972, we can gain new perspectives on the history of higher education in the 20th century. The initiators of this plan combined in their reform a comprehensive concept of spatial planning and regional development with the socio-political aim of distributing equally inhabitants within the federal state and homogenise the geographical space. In no other German federal state did the experimentation with integrated higher education reach a level that encompassed the entire spatial structures of the state. The idea that guided this project was that a contemporary academic landscape serves as a vehicle to install new spatial structures to create a modern, efficient and structurally transformed federal state. This new concept of spatialization was marked mainly by its vitality and flexibility, in which different contemporary views and opinions could be mediated and combined. The social democratic and liberal federal state government intended to implement notions of equal opportunity and achieve democratization by creating equal access to education. In turn, spatial planners were invested in establishing a more equal distribution of the population by expanding education access in areas lacking academic infrastructure. For them, the new academic landscape served to combine educational and socio-political aims and depended on the co-operation of five cities that hosted integrated comprehensive universities. Key questions include how such an academic landscape could be established and what functions it needed to perform. Additionally, different strategies for an implementation as well as consolidation of the planned spatial restructuring are discussed. How do socio-political notions of space relate to geographical actualities? What implications did the comprehensive university plan have for the general academic reforms in the 70ties? Was the concept argued for with planning and spatial structures in mind and then implemenet and consolidated accordingly? By taking an analytical approach using the contemporary notion of academic landscapes and space, the concept of an integrated comprehensive university can be investigated in terms of its spatial dimensions as well as its competition with and dependance on other institutions of higher education. Furthermore, it can be analyzed in relation to public debates on structural transformation. Thus, we gain insight into the plurality of perspectives on not only the academic but also the federal space. At the same time, this allows us to focus on the current situation of higher education and academia within North Rhine-Westphalia as a whole. By choosing this approach, this project distinguishes itself from previous individual studies done on established universities.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants