Tenure Track in Germany: The academic career path debate is misguided

"In the debate on academic mid-level faculty, cloud shifting is practiced. The means of reform have long been found and are increasingly being put into practice by the universities. A guest post.

The debate about temporary employment in science suffers from a multitude of unrealistic expectations. A number of proposals that have been made in this regard lack the necessary sense of reality. This applies to the interventions of the Education and Science Union (GEW), which still seems to believe that it is possible to create more permanent positions while retaining all temporary positions. This applies to the advocates of the Berlin Higher Education Act, who want to convert these temporary positions into permanent ones and fail to recognize that we also need fair opportunities for future generations.

It applies to the Junge Akademie, whose goal is to create a department model with more freedom for those in positions below the professorship, but overlooks the fact that floating mid-level positions in engineering and natural sciences without connection to a working group completely ineffective for research operations would be. 

And they all completely forget that there has long been a solution to the problem of careers that are difficult to plan: it's called a tenure-track professorship. The upheaval associated with their introduction has far-reaching consequences. It should be about them and not about academic wishful fantasies.

The principle of the tenure track is clear:

With the establishment of a thousand tenure-track professorships, funded by the federal government, the path to a new appointment structure was paved in 2017. The corresponding funding program runs until 2032, from which 34 universities benefited in the first round and 57 in the second. Most universities have already taken the next step and are in the process of introducing the tenure track into everyday life. This allows long-term preparation for appointments to professorships that need to be filled again in any subject.

In the old model, a commission was formed at the earliest two years before a chair became vacant. In the tenure-track model, the appointment begins six years earlier, with the establishment of a temporary professorship that is available to postdocs after their doctorate. After six years, anyone who has secured the relevant achievements in research, teaching, mentoring and academic self-administration will then be appointed to the vacant permanent professorship.

Depending on the state law, the procedures for reviewing performance differ in detail, but not in fundamental respects. The principle of the tenure track is clear: Applicants who are eligible for an appointment are recruited at an early stage and can later qualify for a permanent professorship in a position that already offers them a high degree of academic and institutional independence.

Profound reorientation needed

As attractive as the program is, the challenges it poses for the universities are also clear. First and foremost, it requires a profound reorientation of all subjects with regard to their appointment processes. Academic self-supplement begins earlier than in the old model, at the postdoc level. In this system, it is hardly possible for professors who are older to move to a chair at another university. Because all positions are filled by younger people via tenure track, no longer via lateral entry, which was always possible in the previous model in addition to the first appointment of succeeding generations.

In the tenure track system, failure is a double problem, institutional and personal. If, after the evaluation, a candidate proves to be unsuitable for the permanent professorship, another six years must pass before the position can be filled again at the second attempt. Such delays mean a loss of reputation and research power in every subject.

Last but not least, failure is a dilemma for individuals after they have invested precious years of life in an academic career. In the United States, with its nearly 4,900 universities, the path for those who are denied tenure at an Ivy League university usually leads to a professorship at a lower-performing university, such as a community college. In Germany there are no such fallback options, the fall would be harder and more serious for those who failed. On the other hand, not 100 percent of all tenure track professorships can lead to a positive evaluation; a solution to this problem is not in sight.

The dilemma lies in the area of ​​job capacities

The tenure track professorship must be held for six years parallel to the regular to be established as an associate professor. For financial reasons, but also with regard to the teaching capacity that has to be kept constant, no additional positions will be created here, but existing mid-level positions will be converted into temporary professorships. At a large university, thirty professorships often have to be filled each year. This means that thirty temporary professorships for the tenure track must be available six years in advance. The demand for an increase in postdoc positions with lifetime perspectives is unrealistic and inappropriate. 

These positions are already being set up at all universities — but they are no longer mid-level positions, but temporary professorships with tenure track that meet all the parameters that have been the subject of debate in the current debate: planning security, transparency, academic independence.

In ten years, the tenure track will also be the norm for filling a professorship at German universities. Instead of cloud-shifting, everyone involved should engage in the debate on how to best shape this transition. 

This includes the question of whether a small contingent of professorships at each university should in future be kept ready to be filled by established older top people.

However, this also includes the need to create junior professorships for advanced postdocs, which, according to most state laws, may no longer be appointed six years after the doctorate. If you want to prevent a "lost generation", you have to find more flexible regulations here. So there is a lot to do with a view to a fair and successful design of the new appointment models. In view of the evidence of the tenure track system, but also in view of the construction sites that belong to it, the current debate about the restructuring of our postdoc structures seems like the search for the rungs of a ladder on which one has long been standing.

The author is President of the German Rectors' Conference."