オーストリアの大学改革と入門オリエンテーション段階の導入

The Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, establishing the European Union. This historic event brought great impact, not only to politics and economics, but also to education. Especially in higher education, significant changes have occurred. After the Bologna Declaration in 1999, European universities reformed their degree system, and the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) was established to increase the mobility of students and teachers, and in order to enhance the international competitiveness of universities.　

Austrian universities have also set about great reforms. In this paper, I introduce a unique feature of Austrian universities called STEOP (Studieneingans- und Orientierungsphase), which was developed to give first-year students an overview of their studies and to avoid mismatches between university majors and students. I also describe the background and problems associated with this new system.