University reforms under Ferdinand I.

“The university must constantly be reformed”. When looking at the various university organization laws of the past years, one might imagine this sentence to have been uttered in the context of the recent restructuring of the university system. In actual fact, it stems from the time of humanism, in which also many changes occurred in regard to administration and teaching at the University of Vienna.

Two main points of the reform movements have not changed over the centuries: the question of the university’s funding and closely related to this the state’s influence on the administration and teaching.