The Upgrading of the German University System Continues to Fall Between Two Stools. (February 6, 2005)

    In January last year TFW reported "Germany's Governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) Publicises Plans to Raise  Nation's Game in Higher Education and R&D". Because both funding and oversight responsibility for German universities is the province of both the federal government and those of the German states (Länder) something of a bun fight has developed with the universities being caught in no-man's-land.

This past July Jürgen Mlynek, president of the Humboldt University in Berlin, summed it up saying, "It's the same old story; everyone agrees on the content, but no one is prepared to agree politically." Now Nature reports matters are at a standstill:

The programmes designed last year to create world-class centres in German universities and research institutes may fall victim to the chronic battles for power between federal and regional governments. Both sides had agreed to support the programmes, and the money — €390 million [A$653 million] per year from 2006 to 2010 — had been set aside. Shamefully, the bickering has led to the programmes being put on ice.

The irony is that the impasse is a result of an attempt to undo the Gordian knot of federalism in Germany by loosening the jealously guarded powers of the regions. The attempt has failed dismally. Forlornly, one can only hope that the politicians will learn that science and other key areas are the ultimate victims of their power games.

Whether the suggestion that "The fairest way [to allocate the funds] would be for all to agree to entrust the DFG, Germany's main science funding agency, with the task of distributing in a transparent and competitive way the extra money in the framework of a new programme of research excellence," will be taken up remains to be seen, one of the principal difficulties is that the Länder are governed by the Christian Democrats while Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats control the federal government.

Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, the president of the DFG told Nature, "Science in Germany has become a hostage of a political power game. We've got to get out of this unprecedented deadlock." And since the German universities carry out four-fifths of the country's publicly funded research matters have gone well past a bad joke.