Academy and Studying in Germany

Protest marches, protest sleep-ins, Goethe quotations: In order to underline their demands for more time, more co-determination and more money, students have come up with a number of interesting ideas. Yet their calls for change have remained largely unheard.

“Education for all and for free” cry the students marching in a long procession along Munich’s usually tranquil Leopoldstraße. Meanwhile, in a Berlin lecture hall, students are lying next to each other in sleeping bags for a “protest sleep-in”. Their fellow students are building an impressive tower of tables and chairs. It blocks the entrance to the Otto Suhr Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin in Dahlem.

The more “credit points”, the more successful the course of study

Tens of thousands of students have joined in the university strike in Germany since mid-2009. Above all in June and in the second wave in November, there were protest marches and other actions in over fifty cities. Students in Munich, Berlin and Wiesbaden showed themselves to be particularly committed. They are all demanding better educational conditions at their universities.

The criticism is primarily directed against those changes that the implementation of the Bologna Declaration brought with it at German universities. In the 1999 Declaration, Europe’s Ministers of Education resolved on a unification of the European university system so as to enable the recognition of university degrees throughout Europe and thus enable greater mobility for university graduates.

For Germany, this meant parting from its diploma and Magister programs. In the meantime nearly all German universities have been converted to the Bachelor and Master’s system. The success of university studies is now measured by a point system: the more “credit points”, the more successful the course of study. In addition, the eight to ten semester former diploma program has been shrunk to a six semester Bachelor program.

More time, more leisure

The students’ criticism begins here. They protest against the excessive workload and blame university rectors for having squeezed the material of previous curricula one to one into the abridged Bachelor program. Can a student learn in six semesters what before an older student had time to master in ten?

Many students are of the opinion that something has been lost with the Bachelor program that used to distinguish the German university: time and leisure, for example, to spend a whole semester studying a subject other than one’s chosen major.

“A Master’s course for everybody who wants it”

In addition to time pressure, students protest against the increased pressure to perform. In Germany, universities reserve the right to select Master’s students. In order to get a sought-after place in a Master’s program, a student has to be better than his fellow students from the start. Students are therefore demanding “A Master’s course for everybody who wants it”. With a Bachelor degree alone, a graduate’s career prospects in Germany are none too rosy. In contrast to other EU countries, where the Bachelor is a respected degree, many employers in Germany want graduates with a Master’s as well as a Bachelor.

Another thorn in the side of the students is the increasing conversion of the university into a secondary school. The micro-managed timetable and compulsory attendance – measures intended to accommodate the condensed mass of learning material – remind students of their school days. Isn’t the university supposed to be the place where the student decides himself what and how much he will study? Isn’t the polytechnic intended for those who want to study according to a fixed timetable?

Co-determination and more money

Last but not least, the students want more say in university committees and more money for increasing the teaching staff, the renovation of university buildings and the abolition of tuition fees. Because of tuition fees, they believe, not everybody in Germany can now afford to go to university.

To date, the students have achieved no concrete success. The Federal Education Minister Annette Schavan (CDU) sat down together with student representatives, rectors and Culture Ministers at a round table discussion in summer 2009, showed understanding for student demands and conceded that there had been “undesirable developments” in the university system; it is not the federal government, however, that is responsible for making changes but rather the universities and the relevant states.

The states and the universities, however, are passing the buck to each other. Chairman of the Culture Ministers Conference, Henry Tesch, for example, thinks that it is up to the universities to extend the short standard period of study for the Bachelor degree and file away on the program until the Master’s is not the only degree recognized by employers. Margret Wintermantel, President of the University Rectors Conference, on the other hand, sees the responsibility as lying with the federal government and the states. She calls for more teaching staff and so for an increase in financial support from the federal government and the states.

Which Goethe quotation is the right one?

At the end of December 2009 nearly all the student protesters left for the Christmas break. On a building of the vacated university town of Tübingen hangs a banner emblazoned with the words: “Be the hammer, not the anvil. (J.W. Goethe)”.

But many students may be wondering whether the very moderate success of their strike is better summed up by another quotation from Goethe. Namely, the words that Goethe put in the mouth of his Götz von Berlichingen: “Tell him he can kiss my ass ...”. But perhaps after a semester of frugal meals in the university canteen, with the smell of the Christmas roast in their nostrils while lying on their parents’ sofa, the students will have plucked up new courage. At the end of January 2010, the protests are scheduled to continue.