Problems of West German Universities on the Way to Mass Higher Education

The preliminary conference theme "Quality versus Equality: A Problem for Higher Education?" came to me as a big surprise: in many European countries, those evaluating lines of future development in higher education and looking for new problem-solving possibilities have grown used to giving special attention to those countries in which the expansion of higher education is already very advanced. Why, then, does one in the United States scrutinize the European countries, where the share of university students in the corresponding age group is smaller? Is it due to a felt need for information unrelated to one's own situation? Does one wish to document that the other countries are gradually encountering the same problems that one already has? Or does one perhaps expect that the European countries - either on the basis of their particular traditions in higher education and society, or as "developing countries" of educational expansion that are attempting to avoid the difficulties of their predecessors - offer special solutions worthy of consideration in the United States, too?