The IG Farben building in Frankfurt has a history. This is where Zyklon B gas, used at Auschwitz, was invented and Dwight Eisenhower later worked. Now it is part of an Euro 1.8 billion (Rs.12,224 crore) building project at Frankfurt’s Goethe University. Not for Goethe’s 35,000 students the grotty campuses of others: the ‘House of Finance’ has a marble floor inspired by Raphael’s fresco ‘The School of Athens’.
Thousands of less coddled students recently staged protests across Germany against their conditions. ‘Back education, not banks’, demanded protesters fed up with overcrowded lecture halls, crumbling campuses, high tuition fees and a chaotic conversion from the traditional diploma to a European two-tier degree system.
German universities are underfunded by international standards, with just over 1 percent of the country’s GDP allocated for higher education (cf. 2.90 percent in the US, 1.75 percent in Sweden and 1.35 percent in the UK). Professors juggle scores of students; at top American universities they nurture a handful. In switching to the bachelors-Masters degrees prescribed by Europe’s standardising ‘Bologna process’, many universities tried to cram bachelor degrees into just six terms. Only six German universities are among the top 100 in the Shanghai rankings (Munich is highest, at 55th). Just 21 percent of each age cohort gets a degree; the OECD average is 37 percent.
A high-wage country with few natural resources cannot afford sub-par universities, as chancellor (prime minister) Angela Merkel often says. On June 4 the federal and state governments approved an Euro 18 billion (Rs.123,000 crore) plan to create more university places, boost funding for research and cultivate a small group of elite institutions. It’s “a signal that research and education are being taken seriously,” says Margret Wintermantel, head of the German Rectors’ Conference.
Some striking students object to the idea of rewarding research over teaching, and of exalting some universities over others. Yet universities are starting to serve students better. All get at least some money based on the numbers they attract. Many go beyond entrance exams to select students. This, plus the introduction of tuition fees and rankings that gauge teaching as well as research, has led to a change in culture with more competition and “a performance orientation,” says Frank Ziegele of CHE, a think-tank that produces a set of rankings.
Goethe University is in the vanguard. Last year it became a ‘foundation university’, loosening its ties to the state of Hesse, and expanding its freedom to hire and manage staff, and to raise money from private sources. “We can now pay competitive salaries,” says Müller-Esterl, Goethe’s president. The university has hired 50 new professors, including some from foreign rivals. No longer a state agency, the university now finds it easier to raise money from private donors who want to know how it will be spent. Müller-Esterl hopes the university will build its puny Euro 125 million endowment up to Euro 5-6 billion (Rs.35,000-42,000 crore).
But Goethe is not immune to German ailments. Along with other German universities, it is bracing for an influx of 275,000 extra students, caused by a minor baby boom and a one-year reduction in courses of study in high schools. Part of the government’s package is meant to help universities cope with this “student mountain”, which will peak between 2011-13.
The main gap in university financing is not state contributions which match America’s, but in private funding and fees. Tuition fees, as the student protests suggest, are politically explosive. Hesse’s conservative government introduced them but retreated in the face of protests. That put a check on Goethe University’s leap for independence. Most western German states allow tuition fees of a meagre Euro 500 (Rs.35,000) per term, but universities “can’t plan long term because they don’t know if the next government will take it away,” says Wintermantel.
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)