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HRK Executive Committee specifies core demands for the federalism reforms
At its meeting held in Greifswald on 4 May, the Executive Committee of the German Rectors' Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz - HRK) announced the five core demands which the universities expect the planned federalism reforms to deliver. In the run-up to the parliamentary hearing being held on 29 May, the members of the Executive Committee formulated the following points:1. Teaching and research at universities are responsibilities of significance to the state as a whole. In view of the growing challenges, federal government and the federal states must also be able to work together to fund and support these institutions in an agreed and coordinated manner. The legal uncertainty which has so far afflicted the funding of special programmes and pilot projects must be remedied in the new Basic Law.
2. The federal states' right to adopt alternative legislation to that introduced under the legislative competence of the federal government in the field of education and research must be abolished. The uniformity of university degrees and a uniform or at least compatible arrangement of the university admissions process, of the study financing system, and of quality assurance are absolutely indispensable.
3. The introduction of uniform basic conditions and frameworks for the employment of university teachers and of a nationwide-applicable employment and service agreement for staff education and research are needed for the creation of comparable conditions between research institutions in Germany, regardless of whether they be university sector or non-university sector institutions.
4. The practice of assigning funds solely to the purpose of university construction and the requirement for the federal states to provide matching funds must be guaranteed when federal government transfers most of the responsibility for the financial resources to the federal states. In view of the current financial problems faced by many federal states, an interim arrangement is needed under which federal government would be able, over a certain period of time, to provide a greater proportion of funding than already planned.
5. The assignment of organisational and decision-making competence must serve to strengthen the autonomy of universities, because it is primarily the individual universities that have to face up to the international competition in teaching and research. The federal states are called upon to create the requisite conditions for this.
HRK Executive Committee specifies core demands for the federalism reforms [Größe 0.03 MB, Typ pdf]
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