Why is there still no German Harvard

 "The Excellence Initiative wanted to put German universities in the rankings of top international universities. This goal was missed - and yet it helped German research gain greater visibility. There is still no such thing as a “German Harvard”. There are top universities, even universities of excellence, but there is still no German university among the top fifty best universities in the world, for example in the “Shanghai Ranking”. 

Has the Excellence Initiative, whose declared goal it was to move into the top groups of such rankings, failed? Of course, it would be silly to reduce the impact of a complex funding program on dubious achievements like university rankings. The problem is rather that the actual effect is hardly researched. 

A notable exception are Torger Möller and Stefan Hornbostel, who have published an inventory of the Excellence Initiative at the German Center for University and Science Research (DZHW). Their conclusion can be summed up in the formula that the central goals of the initiative have been missed, while other, originally unintended consequences have to be assessed as successes. The goal of increasing university research to the top of rankings, even in an international comparison, was not achieved. It is true that the performance of the funded clusters of excellence in the top publications is better than that of the unsupported universities, according to Möller and Hornbostel. So there are recognizable differences in performance between the Universities of Excellence and the others, but this stratification of the German higher education system is not an effect of the Excellence Initiative. It existed before that. 

No surprise to the researchers 

Did the initiative's funds at least widen the gaps? Not even that has succeeded. The 2015 DFG funding atlas even showed a reduction in the gaps between the universities with the highest and lowest levels of third-party funding in the observation period. According to Hornbostel and Möller, this is not surprising. The funds distributed by the initiative were simply too small to have a noticeable effect. Converted to the individual years and in relation to the total expenditures, the 4.6 billion of the program would have made up a meager three percent of the research expenditures of the higher education sector. In addition, Guido Bünstorf and Johannes König showed in a study from last year that the universities not funded by the Excellence Initiative have tapped other sources of third-party funding and were able to counteract the top group from rushing away. Ironically, the federal government itself contributed by co-financing the initiative on the one hand, but then weakening its concentration effects again in its subsequent funding practice. 

In view of the high costs of applying as a university of excellence, according to Hornbostel and Möller, the universities are now calculating very soberly whether strategies for profiling their own strengths outside of the excellence strategy are not more efficient and sustainable. After all, in the event of a defeat or even the loss of a title, one is saved from “public shame” in the “mass media spectacle” of the race of excellence, the authors pointed out. 

Structured promotion of young talent 

The positive effects of the Excellence Initiative would be found elsewhere. A success attributable to her is the reform of doctoral training, which had previously failed for decades due to the internal structures and blockades of the universities. In the meantime, a structured promotion of young talent in graduate schools and colleges is understood as an original task of universities, the authors believe. This would not be contradicted by the fact that the format of the graduate schools did not survive the Excellence Initiative. Rather, the problem is that the initiative, with its large number of temporary positions, has fundamentally improved the training of young academics, but not their career opportunities at universities. After all, it not only brought about an increase in the time limit for junior professorships, but also ensured an increase in the time limit for professorships with its “belated success model of the junior professorship” and various tenure track models. The initiative thus acted as a “catalyst for new ways of recruiting” which were repeatedly called for but hardly implemented.  

The Excellence Initiative, according to Möller and Hornbostel, is an impressive example of how an impulse that was rather alien to the German research system was politically processed at the federal level until its original radicalism was melted down to a rhetorical residue. The “mobilization effect within the universities” triggered by the initiative should not be underestimated. The large media description of the initiative developed a new dynamic in the science policy of the federal states. In this respect, the “vaguely formulated goal” of greater “visibility” of German research has been achieved in a certain way. Even if this visibility is more of a greater transparency."

 Where was the German mistake? Powerful and influential corporations are emerging close to the world’s top universities attracting young ambitious people from around the world. After graduating from Stanford, you are almost guaranteed a good entrance to the Silicon Valley system. This is where we have to start and not throw some government money at the wall in the hope that maybe some of it will stick.