German Universities Excellence Initiative
The Excellence Initiative of the German Council of Science and Humanities and the German Research Foundation (DFG) aims to promote cutting-edge research and to create outstanding conditions for young scholars at universities, to deepen cooperation between disciplines and institutions, to strengthen international cooperation of research, and to enhance the international appeal of excellent German universities. It is the result of lengthy negotiations between the federal government and the German states.[1]
Since almost all German universities are public (most private universities do not have the official German "Universitätsstatus"), and therefore mainly paid by taxes and generally egalitarian, there is no German Ivy League of private higher education institutions. However, the Excellence Initiative aims to strengthen some selected public universities more than others in order to raise their international visibility. Thus, the German "Universities of Excellence" are sometimes considered the German Ivy League of public institutions, and these universities are commonly referred to by the media as "elite universities".[2][3][4] The initiative is conducted by the DFG together with the German Science and Humanities Council (WR). More than 30 universities in total received funding. It includes three lines of funding:
Altogether €2.7 billion (€1.9 billion for 2007–2012) of additional funds will be distributed over the coming five years, most of this coming from the federal government. The WR is responsible for the third line of funding, and the DFG is responsible for the first and second lines of funding.
Results[edit]
Winners: Future Concept 2019 (Current projects)[edit]
11 future concepts across 13 universities were selected for funding in 2019.[5] Six universities retained their status for a third time: RWTH Aachen, FU Berlin (as part of the Berlin University Alliance), Heidelberg University, University of Konstanz, LMU Munich, and Technical University of Munich. Three further universities retained their status for a second consecutive time: HU Berlin (as part of the Berlin University Alliance), TU Dresden, and the University of Tübingen. The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology returned to excellence status for a second time after having been funded in the first round (2006). The three first-time excellence universities are the University of Bonn, University of Hamburg, and TU Berlin (as part of the Berlin University Alliance).
Reception[edit]
Whether the Excellence Initiative has had a positive effect is currently a matter of debate. A report by the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre indicates that the program failed to create more diverse education options and produced little in the way of lasting change.[11] Additionally, the Goethe Institut claims that an additional criticism is that "competition up to now has focussed exclusively on the research rather than the teaching at universities", that prevailing qualitative imbalances in East and West German education systems may potentially be perpetuated via the program (by favoring more established Western universities over their younger Eastern counterparts), and, furthermore, that the funding may actually be insufficient to achieve the goal of creating "globally competitive universities".[12]
However, an international commission led by physicist Dieter Imboden of the ETH Zurich in Switzerland praised the program, saying it had a "very positive" influence on higher education in Germany, and recommending it be extended and further developed.[13]