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HRK President: Promote top-rate research, secure a broad level of achievement, facilitate competition, overcome the chronic underfunding by the states
The federal research ministry's announcement on 21 January 2004 of a funding programme called "Brain up!" to support top-rate research at universities triggered a controversial public response and occasioned the state ministers of science to announce a joint counterproposal on 28 January. Speaking in Berlin on 3 February, Prof. Dr. Peter Gaehtgens, President of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK), issued the following statement:"The federal government's willingness to promote top-rate performance at higher education institutions in the interest of the country's innovative strength is to be greatly welcomed. It is decisive that such support is given a competitive format. The quality criteria introduced into international science and research represent the only appropriate standards for assessing such competition. We welcome the federal research minister's willingness to cooperate with the major science and research organisations in developing an appropriate funding concept and we intend to contribute constructively towards this.
Of course, support for top-rate research must not be financed at the expense of cutting back funding in other areas of the budget which are of significance to higher education institutions - such as university construction or project funding. Indeed, any support focused on the top-rate performance levels must, at the same time, also aim to secure the German higher education system's broad level of achievement. Moreover, the support initiative must not be designed to run for just a few years: top-rate achievements can only be produced under conditions of funding continuity and planning certainty. Consequently, very much more funding will be required in total than the Euro 250m which federal government has envisaged for its "Brain up!" programme. And this is why the Federal Chancellor's renewed confirmation of the resolutions adopted at Lisbon and Barcelona (three percent of GDP to be spent on research and development up to the year 2010) is to be welcomed. But such a commitment requires that future tasks and responsibilities are performed jointly by federal government and the states.
If Germany's higher education institutions are to be able to compete with the world's leading top-rate institutions in the United States in the medium term, the excessive competition barriers here in Germany need to be resolutely dismantled, the dominance of public administrations reduced and the higher education institutions' decision-making and action-taking freedoms clearly extended. Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge would quickly lose their top-rate academic status if the freedom to choose all their own students, to set their own academic standards for the studies they offer, and to decide themselves on appointments were to be taken from them and sensible supervision conditions for students and young academics were to be forbidden by law, as is the case in Germany, for constituting an "improper development of standards".
Yet, even the very best competition will be of little use, if the highest priority in higher education policy is not placed on remedying the chronic underfunding of Germany's higher education institutions, which federal government and the states have once again further aggravated with their recent budgetary cut-backs. The states, in particular, which are responsible for the core financing of higher education institutions are urgently called upon to face up to their responsibility for reductions in the number of study places and the inadequate study conditions at underfunded and overcrowded higher education institutions. Continuing staffing cutbacks, the inadequate modernisation of technical resources and buildings, and dwindling career prospects for young academics, scientists and researchers currently represent our greatest areas of concern. In such a situation, it would be desirable for the state science and research ministers to meet - with emphasis and as a matter of priority - their responsibility for financing the running costs of higher education institutions."
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