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HRK President comments on today's Bundesrat decision: Legal uncertainty removed for junior professors and fixed-term staff
"The so-called 'amendment to repair' the Higher Education Act dealt with today by the Bundesrat (the German upper house of parliament) means that legal certainty has now been re-established for our junior professors and fixed-term staff," stated the President of the German Rectors' Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz – HRK), speaking after today's Bundesrat meeting in Berlin. The "Law to Amend Employment and Labour Provisions in Higher Education" had become necessary after the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesgerichtshof) had on 27 July this year declared the "5th Amendment to the Higher Education Act" (5. HRGÄndG) to be unconstitutional and so null and void because it exceeded the federation's (Bund) competence to enact framework legislation. And this meant that important legal provisions for young academics, scientists and researchers had become ineffective."It is very important that the junior professor has now, besides the Habilitation, been placed on a sound basis as a qualification stage on the way to meeting the requirements for appointment as a professor. And it was just as essential that the provisions on limiting the term of employment contracts for academic staff were also now reliably in place," said Gaehtgens.
It was now important, he continued, to anchor the junior professorship in the higher education acts of the individual federal states. In so doing, junior professorships must – especially if we want to gain and recruit outstanding young academics, scientists and researchers – be arranged as an attractive career path by raising the calculability of careers in the academic system. "This is why it must also be possible," said the HRK President, "to organise junior professorships in such a way that if holders of such positions prove themselves, then they may also be appointed to full professorships without the need for any other competition or selection for the position in question. Without such a path, the international appeal of the junior professorship would not be really guaranteed. That would mean that the opportunity provided for universities and for their faculties and departments to sharpen their profiles by undertaking longer-term, subject-specific human resource planning would have been lost. But this is also the reason why the decision on this path cannot generally be prescribed by the legislators in the federal states, but can and must be taken by the respective university on a case-by-case basis."
It was regrettable, continued Gaehtgens, that the federal legislator had followed neither the Alliance of Major Science and Research Organisations (Allianz der großen Wissenschaftsorganisationen) nor the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) in the matter of reintroducing the "12-year ruling". The science and research organisations had called for employment contracts to be allowed for externally-funded staff which extend across the whole term of projects with secure financing, even if this means going beyond the twelve years. The German Science Council had proposed that instead of having such an exception, then at least the termination of employment contracts should be made easier.
The HRK expects a satisfactory arrangement to be reached here as quickly as possible.
In addition, the HRK President also pointed out that the amendment had replaced the previously valid minimum requirements for the employment of academic and research staff and for the appointment of junior professors or full professors by introducing specific conditions which had to be met. "I don't want to judge whether that was legally necessary. But it certainly cannot, in fact, be accepted. The previously valid minimum requirements had proven themselves in terms of quality assurance. If these employment and appointment conditions are only to apply "in principle" in the future, then the opportunity will be opened up for not only deviating upwards from the previously generally-accepted quality standards, but also downwards. This is unacceptable in the sense of quality assurance. Consequently, I ask the federal states de facto not to introduce any new practice or procedure here."
And the federal states should also be cautious in their use of the fundamentally welcomed opening of staffing categories. "Care must be taken here in order to prevent any escalation of staffing categories and so any return to the confusing conditions of earlier years. Qualification paths and staffing categories should have uniform standards and should not restrict the mobility and flexibility of academics, scientists or researchers," said Gaehtgens.
On the other hand, Gaehtgens continued, he regretted the fact that the "columniation" of full-time academic and artistic staff structures had remained in place. This only restricted the flexibility of universities and for no reason.
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