The President of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Professor Wolfgang Herrmann, calls for structural change to allow Germany’s universities to take on global competition.
The President of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Professor Wolfgang Herrmann, calls for structural change to allow Germany’s universities to take on global competition.
A university is not isolated from –but must be a part of—society. This is often forgotten.
Prof Wolfgang Herrmann
Delivering the inaugural University President’s Lecture, organised by the Cambridge-DAAD Research Hub for German Studies, Prof Herrmann emphasised the need for continuous improvement in Germany’s higher education along globally accepted standards of excellence.
Speaking on the subject of “The future of German universities”, Professor Herrmann said: “A university is not isolated from –but must be a part of—society. This is often forgotten.”
“Universities’ mission is to serve society,” he said, adding that modern universities do this through education, through research, and –increasingly—through entrepreneurship.
He was addressing Cambridge students, researchers and administrators only a few days after the Times Higher Education rankings revealed 41 of Germany’s universities are among the best in the world. Nine German universities, including TUM, are in the Top 100, with TUM ranked the third best in Germany.
Commenting on the role of university rankings, he said: “There is a plethora of commitments universities have to fulfil in order to serve society. Rankings do not mirror those different roles. They mirror only a small part of what we do. Rankings do not tell us anything about the quality of the engineers we train to work in local companies, or of the teachers we send into local schools to educate our children. So we are careful about rankings. They are a useful tool, but we don’t rely on them. The culture of the university and the variety of talents are more important.”
He singled out internationalisation, interdisciplinarity and competitiveness as the three greatest challenges facing German higher education institutions.
Universities, he said, must be considered in their local and national context. “But it is only international competitiveness that will truly enhance a university’s brand.” He cited TUM’s branch in Singapore as an example of international engagement: “We have joint research activity on megacities. And it’s fun for our PhD students to work in a different cultural environment. This is very much in line with our understanding of a university education.”
Interdisciplinarity, he said, is where the fastest progress in science and technology is being made, because it “yields the best results in complex research areas.” He acknowledged that, despite TUM’s recognised excellence in physical sciences and technology, “technologists also need social sciences”.
He discussed the need for Germany’s higher education institutions to adopt performance-based tenure track processes if they wish to attract and retain top-level researchers, citing a clear, more transparent career path for young researchers as one of the measures needed to make German universities globally competitive.
The Technical University of Munich began moves towards a tenure-track system of career progression in 2012. Prof Hermann argued that this development has contributed to TUM’s success in the German Excellence Initiative, and that similar moves by other universities would improve the overall quality of the country’s higher education.
“Germans have a problem with telling someone that he or she has to leave the university. But universities cannot be a system of social support. When it comes to scientific performance, we cannot expect everyone to remain at the same level if they are not performing.”
“Young people like competition, they know it is necessary to raise levels. These are the people we want to recruit and retain.”
Professor Herrmann’s lecture is the first in a series of yearly prestige lectures by leaders of German higher education institutions to be delivered at the University of Cambridge, under the auspices of the Cambridge-DAAD Research Hub for German Studies.
Launched in January 2016, the Cambridge-DAAD Research Hub for German Studies is a joint initiative of the University of Cambridge and the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst).
Through a regular programme of high-profile lectures, workshops, reciprocal visits and public fora, the Hub aims to stimulate research on German subjects in Cambridge and to enhance Cambridge scholars’ access to the leading individuals and institutes of the Federal Republic.
The Hub aspires to act as a beacon for the study of German culture both in the UK and worldwide, to provide a much needed public platform for the discussion of German themes in the UK, and to create an interface between the University and governmental bodies, both in in the UK and Germany.
Over the following year, the Hub is expected to engage over 400 scholars in Cambridge, Germany, and around the world working on 25 new research projects. Forthcoming initiatives include a programme for visiting scholars; an interdisciplinary conference organised with the German Historical Institute, Moscow; workshops on the city of Berlin organised in collaboration with the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel; and a series of high-profile lectures in Cambridge by winners of Germany’s prestigious Leibniz prize.
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