Germany pinpoints its top universities
Institutions compete for elite university role
Dieser Artikel in Deutsch
Federal Minister of Education, Edelgard Bulmahn, wants to announce a competition to find the five best universities and award each of them 250,000 Euros, spread over five years, to help strengthen their top-ranking in research and teaching.
The basic idea is not new. What is new is that the Federation is taking the initiative and not the Federal States which are autonomous in cultural and educational matters. Years ago, the Secretary General of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Christian Bode, claimed, "In order to be recognized, particularly abroad, Germany needs some outstanding centres of excellence, like Oxford and Cambridge in England, radiating out onto the entire scene." He suggested that the larger states with lots of universities should each develop one of them as a shining light. It is not just that Germany needs showpiece universities, they are already emerging in constantly updated rankings. The AvH produces the top foreign academics' popularity chart. The German Research Foundation (DFG) bases its ranking both on the funding raised and on intangible quality criteria. Specific rankings are also produced by the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE). Jürgen Güdler, the DFG's chief statistician, summarizes the situation thus, "You can see the shining lights even in the fog". Rather, the statistics tend to draw the back runners out of their obscurity into the glow.
The discussion about super universities is apparently only superficially concerned with marketing higher education. To a greater extent than ever before, the central problem revolves around utilising limited funds for toplevel research and teaching. But, as the Conference of Ministers of Education has pointed out, concentration of this kind can only take place at subject level and in clusters of different research partners.
| Hermann Horstkotte | 26.05.2004 |
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