Germans enjoy ‘ground-breaking’ budgets despite bleak outlook

German universities still face uncertainty over inflation and energy costs, but a flurry of political decisions and deals means they enter a winter recession with growing budgets ahead.

At the start of November, Germany’s federal and regional governments agreed to stick by a year-old pact from the former to increase spending on teaching by at least 3 per cent a year from 2023 to 2027, matching a longstanding settlement for research and innovation.

Frank Ziegele, the executive director at the Centre for Higher Education, a thinktank, told Times Higher Education he was surprised the federal “traffic light” coalition, made up of the “red” Social Democrats, the “yellow” Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens were able to keep their 3 per cent commitment. “I have to say I didn’t expect that any more. I think that’s really a success, that they kept their promise,” he said.

The President of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), Peter-André Alt, said a €676 million (£596 million) boost to the previously agreed five-year budget for teaching and learning was “ground-breaking”, taking it to €20.8 billion.

On 14 November the federal economy ministry said Germany was likely to slide into a recession over the winter, with 2023’s economic output down 0.4 per cent compared with this year.

The confirmation that Europe’s largest economy is contracting comes at the tail-end of a grim year for public purses, with universities across central Europe freezing recruitment, teaching remotely and lengthening holidays to control spiralling energy costs.

Professor Ziegele said many universities were talking to the regional governments that fund them about help to meet energy costs, but that it was unclear how negotiations were likely to end. Research intensity was a major cost factor, he said, with one large technical university facing an increase in energy costs of €16 million.

“What is a real success is that it seems we are able to keep the universities open this winter. This is something everyone agrees in Germany,” he said, adding that a return to online teaching would be a “disaster”. In contrast, keeping up in-person teaching was now an “implicit” expectation, after politicians’ generosity.

At the same meeting, science ministers also backed proposals to broaden the next round of Germany’s Excellence Strategy. From 2026, the strategy will fund up to 70 “clusters of excellence”, up from the current 57, while the funding set aside for the prestigious programme will rise by €154 million to €687 million. 

“In an ideal world it would’ve been much more, but in the real world it’s a pretty fantastic result,” said Jan Wöpking, managing director of the German U15, a lobby group for research-intensive universities. “Given what’s possible these days, it’s pretty close to a best-case scenario.”

Without the extra clusters the arduous application process, which can take years and puts a dent in grant-writers’ publishing output, would not be worthwhile, he added. “It comes with a cost and this cost they will only accept if there’s a fair chance at least of securing funding for a cluster. This is why it was cheered throughout the community,” he said.

The Bundestag budget committee also came through for academia, reversing proposed cuts to the 2023 budget of the German Academic Exchange Service. Its president, Joybrato Mukherjee, praised federal parliamentarians for the €31 million uplift in a “difficult budgetary situation”.

There were a couple of losers. While the committee unblocked funds to set up the German Agency for Transfer and Innovation, the amounts agreed were lower than many expected, Professor Ziegele said. There was also no mention of teacher training funding promised in the coalition deal, he said.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com