Elite university is considering job cuts: Excellent austerity

Overcrowded lecture halls, too few lecturers - Germany's universities urgently need money for teaching, and when there is a cash injection, they go into research. This is essentially the criticism of the Excellence Strategy - the multi-billion dollar program of the Federal Government and the Länder for the promotion of cutting-edge research in Germany. The University of Cologne is an example of this dilemma.

The university is considered an elite university. It expects four so-called excellence clusters from January 2019 a lush money blessing for selected research areas - and still has to save. The budget deficit amounts to around 17 million euros per year, says spokesman Patrick Honecker the SPIEGEL. "That is the amount that we currently spend more each year than we get from the state budget." Of this, 11 million euros alone accounted for management costs such as rent and electricity.

Save, delete jobs

That's why the university has already saved 17 million euros this year. In the future, a similar sum should be saved. One sees potential for it among other things with the personnel costs, as Honecker says.

In plain language: It should be eliminated posts. If you work at the university for a fixed term, the contract may not be renewed, but expires. How many and which bodies will be affected is still unclear. Expenses for rented buildings are also to be reduced. The austerity course applies to all faculties.

At the same time, the university is receiving millions of euros in funding for cutting-edge research as part of the federal and state's excellence strategy. At the university, four so-called excellence clusters, ie specific research areas, have been selected for funding. The funds may not be spent otherwise. How high exactly the cash injection for the Cologne University will be, is not yet clear, according to Honecker's information.

In mid-September, the "Excellence Commission" - consisting of the Wissenschaftsrat, the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Minister of Science from the federal and state governments - decided that 34 universities should receive money for 57 particularly convincing research clusters. Total: 2.7 billion euros for seven years. The excellence clusters are intended to help universities to establish themselves internationally as competitive research and training institutions. However, this is often viewed critically by students - even in Cologne.

"That's just cynical"

"Excellent in research and amateurish in teaching - that's simply cynical," says Theodor Jost, the first chair of the General Student Committee of the University of Cologne (AStA). He asks the Rectorate to stop the cuts. "All of the savings plans hit everyone, especially the subjects without supposed excellency status, and many apprenticeship places will break away - without a plan on how this should be absorbed in everyday life."

Some subjects have already been closed. "It can not go on like that," says Jost. It could not be that the money is deducted from teaching to compensate for failures of the administration. The plans meant that the humanities and teacher education were poorly preserved.

The student senator Imke Ahlen criticized, through the austerity measures fewer students could achieve their degree in the standard period of study. "There are simply no lecturers left to look after them." Ahlen called for country support: "If the state government finally finances the universities, we would not have these problems - it does not take a continued austerity program, but more money and flexibility to improve study conditions."

"It's also about the status"

The university administration, on the other hand, emphasizes that no money was lost in teaching for the Excellence Strategy and instead used for research. In addition, Honecker thinks it's not just about the finances. "It is also about the status," he says, and he will also benefit students, among other things in the sense of an image gain.

In any case, the Rectorate does not see any alternatives to the cuts: "If we continue as before, we will eventually be unable to act," says the spokesman. The University of Cologne has grown significantly in recent years. The budget has increased massively: from 450 million euros in 2007 to 810 million euros in 2017. The number of students has risen within six years from 38,000 to 50,000.

One had to react to this with more expenses and investments, says Honecker. Meanwhile, the rush is not so big. In addition, the administration assumes that the university will receive significantly less money in 2020 than the current phase when the current university pact expires in 2020.

The university wants to apply again for the title of Excellence University, with which further funding is connected. The decision will be made in the summer of 2019.