Academy and Studying in Germany

Academic education in Germany is a duty of the state. But there are also professorships endowed by private money.More ...

Protest sleep-ins, Goethe quotations: In order to underline their demands, students have come up with a number of interesting ideas. Yet their calls for change have remained largely unheard.More ...

The Goethe Institute and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen launched the program “Scholars in Residence”.More ...

Business ethics is a field of research and teaching older than the recent financial and economic crisis. In view of the crisis, interest in business ethics in Germany has never been greater than it is today.More ...

The EU’s Erasmus exchange program for student and academic mobility is a huge success all round.More ...

The shortage of funding available to German universities has reduced the variety of courses on offer, often at the expense of the more marginal subjects. A study has now shown just how important these subjects are for Germany.More ...

Many universities have established writing centres. Researchers need to learn more, however, than “good writing”: they should also have mastered the ABCs of scientific and scholarly communication.More ...

Just about anyone can attend lectures at a German university as a guest student. Senior citizens in particular take advantage of this opportunity. This is not popular with all students.More ...

Since the beginning of 2009, German universities and institutes have been presenting themselves on iTunes. As of now, any user world-wide can download information free of charge on the universities, lectures and the most recent research results in the form of a podcast – at home, on trips, in the park or in the train.More ...

From the outset, the Bologna process has been viewed with great criticism at German universities. In October 2008, the theologian Marius Reiser resigned from his chair in protest against the reforms. He explains his reasons in an interview with Goethe.de.More ...

“Not without my partner,” this is a statement heard more and more among academic couples. It is the reason why some universities and research institutes are now offering their applicants academic posts in the form of a twin-pack .More ...

At universities in Germany women occupying professorial posts are indeed few and far between. That is why the universities decided to do something about it – in July 2008 at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (abbreviated DFG, German Research Foundation) a large majority of them advocated the introduction of “research-oriented gender mainstreaming”. Just how effective however would a voluntary obligation like this be in the field of research? Might not a system of quotas be better?More ...

Private universities in Germany have also been affected by the economic crisis – though to a much less dramatic extent than in other countries, thanks to a low-risk investment strategy. In fact, in some cases the downturn is actually stimulating the range of academic courses on offer.More ...

Former Samuel Fischer Guest Professors at Berlin’s Free University include Feridun Zaimoglu, Raoul Schrott and Kenzaburo Oe. The guest professorship programme is intended to further critical reflection on world literatures, and the authors often take a highly original approach to their teaching – it is quite conceivable for seminars to take the form of telephone conferences or talk shows.More ...

What has long been common practice in research is now to take hold at last in teaching: a kind of excellence initiative at German universities is planned to help improve the status and quality of teaching. It is seeking cogent teaching and learning policies for the future.More ...

For many years now research institutes calling themselves “Think Tanks” have been influencing the reform debate in Germany with their business-oriented approach to education. They are guided by the idea of human capital and bearing this in mind they are forever looking for new ways of marketing education – the PISA survey of course has only helped to consolidate this approach.More ...

Starting in 2009, the Deutsche Welle will offer a programme in International Media Studies at its in-house academy. Here young media workers from all over the world will receive advanced training and take their know-how back to their countries.More ...

The founding of the first German-Turkish University in Istanbul (DTU) is a “flagship project” of the Ernst Reuter Initiative. Beate Schindler-Kovats from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), talks about the significance of the DTU for the Turkish-German relationship.More ...

Unicum is part of everyday life at German universities, like the student canteen and exam nerves. Nearly every student has once had the magazine with the red logo in his hand. Reading it is free of charge and worth the while: for 25 years Unicum has reported on everything concerning student life.More ...

Professors give marks to students: that is normal. But for a few years now students have also been evaluating their teachers. This is called „teaching evaluation”. Universities treat the results very differently.More ...

What is the multi-billion euro Excellence Initiative doing for German universities? At the end of October an interim report on the elite funding programme is supposed to answer this question. But researchers already agree: the programme should be continued.More ...

The "Bologna Process" threatens to founder at German universities. Up to now, none of its goals has been achieved, says former German minister for cultural affairs Julian Nida-Rümelin in an interview with Goethe.de.More ...

"Member since May 2006, 193 friends, 454 messages in my inbox, 452 messages in 'sent items', 232 pinboard entries, countless wasted hours", is how student Frauke Lüpke-Narberhaus sums up two years of membership of the social networking site StudiVZ. She has opted out – but more than five million people are still joining in.More ...

Berlin, and specifically the Free University there, is the best place to study the true, the good, and the beautiful – the "added value" in the cultural domain – among all German universities. This, at least, is the verdict of the international jurors judging the Excellence Initiative competition. Politicians, however, believe that this alone is not enough to qualify as a "super uni".More ...

German universities are particularly worried about losing some of their best young talent to a brain drain. Klaus Wehrle, one of the ones who came back, talks of the charms and risks of an academic career.More ...

The University of Constance is small and still quite young, has always been ready to innovate and places a big emphasis on supporting young talent. The international jurors who assessed Germany's higher education institutions during the Initiative for Excellence Competition felt this approach was particularly forward-looking.More ...

Through the "Excellence Initiative", the University of Heidelberg has been able to reaffirm its outstanding significance for the natural and biological sciences.More ...

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.More ...

Teaching is the poor cousin in German higher education. For most professors it is research that takes precedence, which means that students' training suffers considerably.More ...