More funding for higher education and research

Germany’s federal and state governments have agreed to permanently provide joint support for higher education and launch new funding measures for higher education and research. Some €41.5 billion (US$46.5 billion) in extra funding is being given over 10 years to universities to enhance quality and make Germany more competitive in the academic world.

The funding package, announced by Federal Education and Research Minister Anja Karliczek and the Gemeinsame Wissenschaftskonferenz (Joint Science Conference of the federal government and heads of federal states), focuses on studying and teaching, innovation in higher education and making university research more competitive internationally.

Zukunftsvertrag Studium und Lehre stärken – the Future Agreement on studying and teaching – is conceived as a permanent framework for federal and state governments to collaborate in supporting universities in longer-term efforts to boost learning conditions and teaching quality and in maintaining adequate study programmes.

Innovation in der Hochschullehre – innovation in university teaching – seeks to institutionalise funding of innovative concepts in teaching and make quality standards and the significance of higher education teaching more visible.

Together, Zukunftsvertrag Studium und Lehre stärken and Innovation in der Hochschullehre are to be given €41.5 billion in funding from 2021 to 2030.

Pakt für Forschung und Innovation IV – the pact for non-university research and innovation – providing a total of €120 billion over the above 10-year period, is the fourth instalment of a funding programme launched for the first time in 2009 and aimed at ensuring researchers have more planning security in an increasingly competitive international environment.

The three new measures are to be given final approval by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the federal states on 6 June.

‘Significant milestone’

Karliczek said in Bonn that the significance of education, research and innovation generally had to be more appreciated. “Today’s decisions are a milestone on the way to this objective,” she noted. “Germany has to be an education and research country.”

Karliczek also wants to see improvements in communicating and transferring research results to industry and society.

The new agreement has been given a mixed reception by higher education organisations. Peter-André Alt, president of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (German Rectors’ Conference), praised the federal and state governments for assuming joint responsibility for higher education and research and welcomed the federal government now becoming a permanent co-funder of higher education teaching.

“This collaborative effort by the governments gives an important signal for the national significance of higher education and offers today’s and tomorrow’s students clearer prospects for the future,” Alt noted in Berlin. “Jointly raised funding will now be maintained at a steady level of €3.8 billion.”

Alt commented that previous instalments of the Higher Education Pact, originally agreed between the federal and state governments in 2007 to provide extra money for higher education, had meant “constantly driving on sight for 13 years, always being anxious about funding over limited periods. Hopefully, the new Future Agreement will provide a basis for significantly more planning certainty in higher education.”

Germany’s Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW or Education and Science Workers’ Union) is rather more sceptical, referring to the agreement as “insufficient” and above all criticising employment aspects.

So far, universities and the state governments have argued that since Higher Education Pact funding is limited, only temporary jobs can be created via the pact. GEW Deputy Chairman Andreas Keller demands that from 2021 on, academic employment funding via the Future Agreement be spent 100% on permanent posts. But this, Keller says, is precisely what the agreement fails to stipulate.

The GEW complains that, currently, nine out of 10 academic staff contracts are temporary, while half of them cover less than one year.

“We acknowledge that the Future Agreement will be unlimited as of 2021,” Keller notes. “But it is completely incomprehensible why lecturers funded via the new pact can still be hired and fired semester by semester. An agreement covering an indefinite period and limited staff contracts – that just doesn’t fit together.”

Michael Gardner Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com