Academy and Studying in Germany

As if a taboo has been broken: for the first time, the German universities have been faced with a direct comparison of their research capacities. International experts selected the best ones, the most promising candidates to compete in the world league.

The unrealistic dream that all German universities are equal has faded away. "The best German universities will now become even more visible around the world and stronger in the global competition between education institutions." So said Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan in mid-October at the end of an official excellence or elite competition between the universities in Germany, the country of Humboldt. There were two rounds of applications in 2006/7. Some 400 experts, including more than 300 leading international researchers, tested which universities come up to international standards as a whole or in part, and can thus be regarded as global players in the academic arena.

The clear outcome: nine, out of more than 100 German universities, have a worldwide impact. Alongside the traditional establishments at Freiburg, Göttingen, Heidelberg and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, these are the much younger Free University of Berlin, founded in 1948, the 40-year-old University of Constance and the Technical Universities in Aachen, Karlsruhe and Munich. Another 31 universities seem to be world-class in certain areas, such as in training young academics in special post-graduate schools, or in co-operation with industrial research.

Inequality Gains Respectability

A total of 37 universities, almost one-third of all the universities in Germany, swept the board of all awards; two-thirds were left empty-handed. "This result shows the differentiation amongst the universities," says Matthias Kleiner, President of the German Research Foundation (DFG). "The tenacious concept of the equality of all our universities has finally been killed off." The differentiation is even geographical: twelve, or almost one-third of the outstanding universities, are located in the two southernmost states of Germany, Baden-Württemberg (7) and Bavaria (5). There is a continuous decline from the south to the north. Of those universities based in the eastern part of Germany since German reunification in 1990, only four were successful. Peter Frankenberg, the Research Minister of Baden-Württemberg, sees a clear link between academia and commerce: "People studying in our state have excellent prospects of finding an intellectually challenging job here too." Global German companies like Daimler, Bosch, Porsche, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen and SAP are headquartered in Baden-Württemberg. Salaries and rents, i.e. incomes in general, are well above the German average. The same goes for Munich, the capital of Bavaria, which hosts two elite universities.

Science Beats Humanities

Life sciences, new materials, microelectronics: such are the dominant themes of the elite competition. However, the humanities did perform better in the second round than in the first. This time, they accounted for six out of 21 post-graduate schools, e.g. for African studies, Muslim cultures or literary studies; of twenty "excellence clusters" between universities and non-university research establishments, four handle cultural issues, e.g. the relationship between religion and politics.

The reactions on the part of some of those affected by the poor performance of the humanities were cutting. The President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Dieter Borchmeyer, criticises an "absolutisation of natural science-based and technical thinking, the idea that this alone represents research and education, the essence and the task of the modern university". The critic draws the bitter conclusion: "Those disciplines whose world-wide impact has created the image and the structure of the German university have been reduced to foreign bodies in their own institutions." This reference to the German university tradition, however, is rendered questionable by an anecdote recalled by the Wissenschaftsrat (Science Council), the highest policy-advice body, in a recommendation: in 1920 the famous literary scientist Ernst Robert Curtius rejected a call to Aachen Technical University, one of today’s elite universities, because of a fear that the professor of heating and ventilation might address him as an equal. The need for some people in the humanities to take a reality check has not disappeared since then.

The outcome of the excellence initiative may cause the humanities to reflect anew about their mandate and usefulness, and about the combination of research and teaching. In fact, one in four students takes a humanities course – even if the international judgement is that their lecturers do not display corresponding excellence in research. So this would imply that there will inevitably be a move from research-oriented to purely teaching universities. One might also note: the exemplary state of Baden-Württemberg has always placed those humanities courses which serve to train teachers outside the universities in "teacher-training universities".

Innovative Leap and Verve

"The competition is producing only winners, no losers," says Peter Strohschneider, the chairman of the Science Council. He is referring to the excited mood generated by the competition at all the universities. Virtually none of them stood on the sidelines. After all, there was the small matter of a total of two billion euros on offer from the Federal Government and the Länder to the (37) winners over a five-year period. However, the money was at most a secondary incentive: Aachen Technical University, for example, has an annual budget of half a billion euros already and will now be getting just over twenty million more as an elite university. The main incentive for the participating institutions was to attain the best possible academic ranking. Only a few institutions refused to take part. Almost everywhere, in all faculties and bodies, development plans were drawn up for a reorganisation (based on strong university management) and the setting of academic priorities.

In organisational terms, the stronger networking of the universities with non-university research establishments proved to be forward-looking. "If the top universities in Germany are to draw level with those in the USA, the public-sector support must be clearly concentrated on the universities," advises Rolf Hoffmann, Director of the German Fulbright Commission. Big Science simply requires Big Money. And the reason why Karlsruhe and Aachen ranked so high was indeed mainly due to their co-operation with state research centres in the vicinity.

Also, all the universities in the excellence competition came to the understanding that they cannot be top in every discipline, but rather that they need to enhance their own strengths in internal competition. Even those which did not win this time will implement the plans they drew up: not least so that they did not simply waste their time. And because, as Federal Research Minister Schavan promised, there will be another round of the competition in four or five years, when everyone can enter again – perhaps with a better chance next time.