Science and Education

Elmar Weiler remembers well the time when the Research Training Groups were first being formed at German universities. That was twenty years ago; Weiler then held the Chair for Plant Physiology at the University of Bochum. Not everyone was happy that a new form of doctoral research had found entry to the universities: “It was controversial”, recalls the current Rector of the University of Bochum, “it was about how free doctoral research could be”. The question was whether these were young researchers who could work independently, or whether they needed a structured training, very similar to pre-doctoral studies.

Exciting process

Weiler himself found the process “very exciting”, and so he became one of the first to introduce a Research Training Group of the German Research Foundation (Graduiertenkollegs der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft / DFG) to the University of Bochum. Physicians and biologists had come together in a research group, focussed on complex cell structures. The novelty was that the doctoral candidates oriented their work to interdisciplinary research and were supervised by more than one professor. “That was, in my opinion, a huge improvement”, says Weiler.

It is in fact one of the marks of the Research Training Groups that young researchers no longer do their doctoral work with only one supervisor but instead benefit from the knowledge of several. Also new twenty years ago was that the members of the Research Training Groups sought a research topic that could combine multiple disciplines under one roof: “The topic was to enable an exchange amongst PhD students”, says Annette Schmidtmann, head of the Promotion of Young Researchers Group at the DFG.

The Science Council champions the Research Training Groups

The DFG was instrumental in introducing Research Training Groups nation-wide to Germany; in the meantime, more than 20,000 PhD students have graduated from one. One of the first precursors was formed in 1985 at the University of Cologne on the subject of “molecular biosciences”, with the object of offering a new form of PhD programme. It was funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, which today is still committed to promoting young researchers.

The Science Council observed the model very carefully and made its recommendation for additional Research Training Groups. With a federal-state agreement in the early 1990s for the funding of Research Training Groups, the authorities finally established a legal basis for the model. It was also at this time that the DFG was given responsibility for new Research Training Groups: for the maximum term of nine years, it was to provide consultants and promote the Groups.

The DFG was the first institution that systematically engaged in the establishment of Research Training Groups. Others followed: federal states such as Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia launched their own promotion models. At the same time, graduate schools, where the doctoral candidates could also make use of multiple supervision, were set up at several universities. Confusing is that the names are not protected – and therefore allow considerable room for interpretation as to what exactly is to be understood under a graduate school or a Research Training Group.

New Promotion Models through the Excellence Initiative

The nation-wide introduction of graduate schools and Research Training Groups, however, first became possible through the Excellence Initiative, in which a total of almost two billion euros has been invested in top-level university research. The DFG and the Science Council coordinated the Initiative: in addition to nine elite universities and 37 Excellence Clusters, they sponsored 39 graduate schools that offered PhD students structured training.

Among others, the University of Bochum won the bid to promote gifted PhD students at the Ruhr University Research School. “Our goal, however”, says Rector Weiler, “is to extend the offer to all our graduate students”.

Not only praise for structured training

The number of PhD students that are sponsored by a Research Training Group or a graduate school has in fact steadily risen – even if the forms of promotion are very diverse. And it is still not clear whether the young researchers really need to pass through a structured model. Some professors urge calm and cleave to the traditional master-pupil model. Organisations such as TU9 (comprising the strongest German technical universities) have also repeatedly expressed scepticism and questioned whether the new model does not reduce the fostering of young talent to school instruction.

A study commissioned by the DFG involuntarily supports their criticism. It examined the educational and career paths of graduates of Research Training Groups that took their doctorates between 1990 and 2000. Although the authors noted that the PhD students encountered good qualification conditions in the Groups – they were specifically integrated into the research activities of the university – not all of them were satisfied with the supervision. Only half of the students indicated they had had more than one supervisor, though multiple supervision is the real goal of Research Training Groups.

The study also showed that graduates of Research Training Groups do not have better prospects for an academic career; on the contrary, students that graduated in accordance with the classical model had even better odds. The authors concluded: What is important is the final grade received by PhD students, how many articles they have written and how many lectures they have given.

The DFG nevertheless speaks of a successful model, and the promotion programme is being further expanded. Since the late 1990s, for example, there have also been International Research Training Groups in which German and foreign universities cooperate.