Access to the University in some countries of the European Union

Abstract

This paper shows the systems of access to Higher Education in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. This selection was done taking into account that these are the largest and most thickly populated countries and also the ones with the best economy within the EU. And what is even more important is that their educational systems have a long tradition and have been exported to other countries. The aim of the paper is to give the reader the opportunity of comparing the different approaches to this issue in the different countries.
As a result of this comparative analysis, some common elements can be found in the different approaches. However, the most important conclusion is that access to Higher Education is not an easy problem, and each country has its own way of solving it. The reason is that each of them has a particular educational and social context that requires a specific solution to the problem. Some aspects that the approaches in the differem coutries have to take into account are: degree of centralism or decentralism of their educational administration; degree of autonomy of their secondary schools and universities; needs of their economical system; profesional demands of their societies, etc.