The international competitiveness of national higher education systems is an important political issue in many countries. These politics drive some governments to reform their systems by borrowing elements from societies with systems thought to be superior. These authors argue that a simple transfer of isolated elements from one higher education system to the other has its dangers. To illustrate this point, they discuss the 2002 German reform, which sought to adopt elements from higher education in the United States, yet was found unlikely to strengthen the incentives of German professors to engage in high-quality research and teaching, as it was intended to do. Instead, the envisaged changes are likely to generate negative side effects. For example, the introduction of performance-oriented rewards for faculty members, in the absence of clear links between individual performance and institutional reputation and resources, is likely to fuel unproductive "influence activities" and to promote mediocrity instead of augmenting the quality of higher education. (Contains 48 footnotes.)