Excellence Initiative

Last month I travelled to Bonn, now a backwater and much come down from its heyday as a capital city, staying in a hotel whose very slightly faded 1980s air marked the passing of an era. I was acting as a reviewer for the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - the German Research Foundation). The panel on which I was sitting was charged with reviewing submissions for the 'Excellence Initiative' the major push by Germany to create academic clusters that will compete globally across the research landscape. It was an instructive process (managed superbly by the DFG, a model for funding bodies elsewhere) and though, because the outcomes will not be known for some time, the details are confidential, this second round of the initiative should prompt reflection internationally.

A personal note. In 1955 my grandfather received from the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Order of Merit (Grosses Verdienstkreuz des Verdienstordens). This distinction was awarded for my grandfather's work on post-war reconciliation. I am at least as proud of it as his pre-war visit, wearing his First Wold War medal ribbons, to see Hermann Goering with a view to persuading him that the antisemitism of the Nazi party was unjustifiable. An act of both extraordinary bravery and misplaced faith in the power of reason. Even after the war, and experiences that would have alienated most people, my grandfather remained deeply proud of his German heritage and of the culture to which he was heir, however much the Nazis had sought to deny him it. A profound respect for the achievements of German learning, art and culture is something that I have inherited. This also from my father, brought up in Poland in the cultural shadow of Imperial Austria. There is a strong emotional resonance in making a contribution to German science, the same feelings as walking for the first time, a Professor, into the lecture hall at the University of Vienna to present a seminar - a sense of continuity and fracture.

Despite the historical standing of German science and engineering, the advent of university research league tables and comprehensive bibliometrics have revealed that the performance of the German academy as a whole has lagged its international competitors (it is worth noting parenthetically that for excellence in education and industrial engagement German universities have remained extremely successful). The reasons for this relative underperformance in research are not difficult to understand. The structures of the German universities have a set of characteristics that run counter to the imperatives of international science. In my subject the dominant form of organisation has been the largely stand-alone 'Institute' run by a 'big Professor', supported by dependent students and assistants, and endowed with significant fixed structural funding. Professors are civil servants, appointed ultimately by the state. Collaboration among peers is infrequent. Appointment to the Professorial ranks is a difficult process with slots being opened up relatively rarely, and though now search is more international, historically the system has been seen as quite closed to outsiders. The university funding system has operated on a largely regional basis avoiding privileging particular institutions and with few incentives for success and limited scope for independent initiative. Research can be fragmented across organisations outside the University structures.

Much of this is now changing. Universities have gained substantial control over their own funding. Institutions are taking a much more international perspective. The Excellence Initiative is the most prominent of changes happening within the German system. It aims explicitly to fund high performing concentrations of expertise and to support the creation of substantial research focuses within universities. It provides a framework that brings together organisations across the research spectrum and collaboration between universities and the Max-Planck and Fraunhofer societies are being given a shape. Most significantly it is supporting radical change in German academic structures, requiring Professors to collaborate in support of a strategic research agenda and allowing significant independence to junior researchers who are recruited openly and given scope to develop their own teams. Large scale funding is flowing to the successful clusters.

Over the last few years UK research-intensive universities have not really felt competition from the German universities. ETH and EPFL have been the only serious competitive threats. I suspect that this may be about to change. In short, German science and engineering is 'getting its act together'. The second round of excellence funding and the maturing of the clusters funded in the first round suggest to me that we will face a significant challenge to the standing the UK now enjoys. Germany was the centre of science in the 19th century and its great universities are organising themselves to reassert that position.