Science and Education in Germany – Background

The Excellence Initiative for cutting-edge research at universities has brought a new dynamic into the German research world. Non-university research institutes also play a significant role. Most of the money for research and development, however, comes from industry.

“RWTH 2020: Meeting Global Challenges. The Integrated Interdisciplinary University of Technology” – this is the name of the future strategy with which the Rhine-Westphalia Technical University (RWTH) Aachen University has applied for the next round of the Excellence Initiative. It will continue a process that began several years ago. With a similar-sounding development concept in 2007, the university was already able to score points and has since then been funded with a total of 180 million euros for five years. “For us the Excellence Initiative is an important tool for the development of our university”, says Ernst Schmachtenberg, Rector of the RWTH Aachen.

The university has implemented very different measures: among others, cooperation with the Jülich Research Center and a strengthening of interdisciplinary research. It has also succeeded in attracting scientists from abroad – for instance, to the physics department and a graduate school with the name of the “Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science” (AICES). “Without the additional funds, this would have been impossible”, says Schmachtenberg. The university was also able to profile itself in the elite competition with other excellence clusters and graduate schools – and the Aachen rector hopes that applications for continuations and new projects in the next round will also meet with success: “Then we would have the unique opportunity of further sharpening our scientific profile”.

Excellence Initiative should promote beacons of science

In 2005 the German federal and state governments launched the Excellence Initiative with the aim of promoting cutting-edge research at universities. In the first round, about 2 billion euros flowed into nine new concepts, 39 graduate schools and 37 excellence clusters. In 2012 the elite competition enters a new round. Funders have increased the budget by a good third, to 2.7 billion euros. The competition is carried out by the Science Council and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft / DFG), one of the largest research funding organizations in Germany. The competition aims at promoting beacons in the German research landscape, which, according to DFG President Matthias Kleiner, it has succeeded in doing: “The Excellence Initiative has changed the German university and research system more lastingly than other programs of the past decades”. In 2012 the winners of the new round will be announced; the funding then begins in November.

Though the Excellence Initiative is the most prominent program funded by the DFG, its cost of approximately 433 million euros made up in 2010 only about 16 per cent of the total volume of DFG funding. Far more money flowed into the funding of individual scientists and scholars – about 894 million euros. In addition, 546 million euros went to collaborative research centers where scientists and scholars from different university departments work together.

Non-university research institutions

An important role in the German scientific world is also played by non-university research institutions, which participate in many projects supported by the Excellence Initiative. These institutions include the Max Planck Society, the Fraunhofer Institute, the Leibniz Society and the Helmholtz Society. In 2009, according to the Federal Statistical Office, non-university research institutions invested a total of 9.9 billion euros in research and development. That was 6.3 per cent more than the previous year.

The Helmholtz Society, for example, has a budget of about 3.3 billion euros. Approximately 31,000 scientists work at its 17 research centers work in six areas: energy, earth and environment, health, key technologies, the structure of matter, aeronautics, space flight and transport. “The Helmholtz Society’s mission is to make contributions to solving major urgent questions of society, science and business through strategic and programmatic top-level research”, says Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Society. “We thereby carry on collaborative research with our national and international partners and, above all, with universities.”

And evidently with successes: scientists of the Helmholtz Society have already been awarded several Nobel Prizes. In 2008 Harald zur Hausen received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his discovery that cervical cancer is caused by a viral infection. The research was done at the German Cancer Research Center of the Helmholtz Society. In 2007 the Nobel Prize in Physics went to Peter Grünberg of the Helmholtz Research Center at Jülich for his discovery of giant magnetoresistance, which is used for data storage.

Industry is the strongest pillar

Most money for research and development in Germany, however, is given by businesses. With a share of two-thirds of the funding, they have been the strongest pillar of this work for years. In 2009, according to the Donors Association for the Humanities and Sciences in Germany, businesses spent about 45.3 billion euros for internal research and development. In addition, they gave research commissions in the amount of 4.4 billion euros. These went not only to domestic universities and non-university research institutions, but also increasingly to businesses outside Germany.

Moreover, the significance of service providers is increasing, as in areas such as software development: “Today you already find a good 15 per cent of the personnel for research and development in this sector”, says Gero Stenke, Director of the Science Statistics, Ltd., of the Donors Association, which conducts surveys on the research activities of businesses. “In the early 1990s, it was only five per cent.”