Chapter 4: Between Freedom of Choice and Normative Demands: A Students’ Perspective

With the development of the welfare state in the late 19th century, a social modernization process has emerged. As a result, an education and knowledge society has developed, in which knowledge and education is seen as a contributory factor for agency and social mobility (Kolland & Wanka, 2013, p. 78). This also had an impact on the academic field. In recent years there has been a trend towards education becoming more academic. For example, former vocational trainings in the field of care work and physiotherapy need to be studied at university and finished with a bachelor or master’s degree. Every year the number of students rises and new educational institutions like private universities and technical colleges become more available, in addition to public universities. With regard to actual data from 2019 and 2020, Statistic Austria reported 274,691 Austrians (single count) related to 8.9 million people living in Austria (round 3.1% of the Austrian population), who study either as regular students or students taking academic courses. In round figures 68.6% (188,636) of these students were enrolled in courses at public universities whereas round 2.3% (6,438) of the people study at private universities and further 5.6% (15,302) of the total amount of students chose university colleges of teacher education (Statistic Austria, 2020, p. 33). In the past few decades, college and university degrees have almost quadrupled (from 4.5% to 17.5%) (Statistic Austria, 2020, p. 98).