University Excellence and its Requirements
Speech on the occasion of the Academic Celebrations for the handing over of the Presidential Office on the 10th of January 2005


Dear Prime Minister, dear Minister,
dear ladies and gentlemen.

It so happens that within three months the current Presidents of six of the eight universities of Lower Saxony are leaving and successors are assuming their office. As a result there is currently a cluster of farewells and inaugurations. As all universities face similar problems, follow more or less comparable objectives and as the ways with which they want to achieve these objectives differ only slightly, I presume that the redundancy in the speeches that belong to the ritual of such events is not inconsiderable. Everywhere the emphasis will be on excellence and efficiency, autonomy, sustainable planning, performance-oriented awarding of funds, identification of priorities, internationalisation, transparency, competition and similar. Before I present my version on University Excellence and how we can promote it, I would like to begin with some comments of a personal and general nature: so that is becomes more comprehensible what you can expect from me and what you cannot, and so that my following statements do not obscure the fact that I consider the limits of feasibility of University Excellence very tight.

On myself

Over recent months I have often been approached regarding the move to the new role. Most of the time such conversations would begin by the other party expressing their sadness for my leaving research – whether I could even imagine a life without research and whether I had really thought it through well were questions frequently asked. I gained the impression that the move from research and teaching into administration presented a demotion for most people, where the compensation is at best a higher gratification of personal vanity.
For me it was never a decision about pro- or demotion, loss or gain. For me this Office presents primarily a wholly unexpected and completely new challenge for my last professional years, combined with the chance to make achievements for research and teaching in ways completely different from before. The excitement and curiosity regarding the new duties is however tinged with doubt as to whether I really will be up to the challenge. At this point I would like to thank Horst Kern, the entire Presidium and all individuals in the Administration and the Faculties, who over recent months have helped me prepare myself for the new duties with much patience and tact.
My experiences in research were gained in a special experimental field of biosciences. During my years in the Senate and Main Committee of the DFG I have however discovered that the intrinsic scientific problems in the humanities, natural sciences, biosciences and engineering are more similar than commonly assumed, and that successful research in all subjects has similar prerequisites. Scientific curiosity, the courage to tackle both important and unsolved questions again and again, to take unconventional paths and apply new methods, to accept inspiration from other subjects, disciplined working, the ability to be self-critical and good communication are characteristics that should define any researcher.

My teaching experiences in biochemistry, a pre-clinical foundation subject generally unloved by students and considered more of a stumbling block on the path to the medical profession are not very representative of university teaching. Pre-clinical teaching is characterised by resembling school rather than University instruction. In contrast to this was the teaching of the students who joined me as medical and natural sciences Doctorate students, and the cooperation with the young researchers whom I was able to accompany on the path of their own research career. They brought experiences which are amongst the most beautiful and satisfying of my career. Unfortunately the teaching of diploma students and Doctorate students is greatly under-perceived and under-appreciated as an achievement of the University, even though the time demands placed on all involved are of a similar extent as the foundation degree or advanced degree.
University Excellence: Its Requirements. With regard to the feasibility or controllability of University Excellence, I would like to begin with the observation that excellence in academics, which always means research and teaching, is primarily the result of the performance of individuals. Creative research that yields new knowledge lives from a combination of systematic processes with a willingness to react flexibly to unforeseen circumstances. Creative research is thus marked by a low level of plannability. Further, it often swims against the tide and violates prevailing rules. In that way it is similar to innovative art, which, unlike research, we are more likely to accept cannot be the result of planning but the product of a mixture of decisions guided by instinct, knowledge and experience.
University Excellence never has been and never will be the direct result of steering or the result of administrative constraints. Setting of objectives, distribution of duties, reporting and controlling suitable for the steering and optimisation of business and administrative processes are ineffective in the central areas of University Excellence. Emphasising this in particular today seems important to me, as universities keep being compared to and equated with corporations more and more.
However, the idea of uncontrollability must not be over-emphasised. For both art and science it is valid that they thrive when the environment is right and the appropriate individuals are at work. Excellent appointments and the enrolment of dedicated students determine the quality of the individuals at universities. The universities’ facilities, the burden through non-research and non-teaching duties, student-teacher ratios, hierarchies, internationalisation and equality are factors shaping the general conditions. It is in the nature of university performance in research and teaching that changes to the general conditions only show delayed noticeable results. This demands thinking and actions from the responsible individuals exceeding terms of office and legislative periods. Universities can only expect the high degree of trust connected with this if they on their part create the basis for this trust by creating the highest level of transparency.

An example from our history: The foundations for Göttingen’s great heyday in the natural sciences during the first third of the 20th century were laid long before by the Prussian higher education policies, for which the name of the legendary Ministerial Head of Department in Berlin Friedrich Althoff stands, namely in the last two decades of the 19th century.

Promotion of University Excellence

The objective to increase the efficiency and excellence of our University is one I surely share with all predecessors in office. In contrast to many of them I do however lack the pertinent experiences in university administration and higher education politics. I look with envy to my predecessor, who on assuming his office did not only have relevant experience in the University Management, but as an organisational sociologist was even able to rely on his own specialist expertise when restructuring the Administration. In this respect I have to rely on the rather coincidental experiences which I have gained with the University and its Administration from the perspective of a researcher and teacher.

I would like to give two examples of experiences that I would like to be guided by. When I came to Göttingen in 1986 I was not aware of the extent to which my work would be sustainably supported by the fact that there was a very diverse representation of not only my narrow specialist field of molecular medicine but biosciences as a whole. In addition to the traditionally strongly research-oriented bioscience faculties, Göttingen is also the location of an unusually high number of non-University research institutions of particularly high quality. Being able to meet interested colleagues in my own location from whom I could obtain advice and help with experiments and who made it possible to freely access large equipment usually not easily available, enormously furthered my own work and that of my colleagues. The establishment of research associations, such as specialist research areas, researcher groups and graduate colleges succeeded in Göttingen almost on its own.

From these experiences I have gained the firm conviction that scientific work is encouraged most crucially if a critical number of working groups are clustered in one location. These may have different starting points and each be following their own objectives, but are nevertheless close enough to be able to communicate methodically and contextually and form scientific networks.
In my view the University thus does well when appointing new teaching staff to ensure that they not only gain the best person, but that the appointment can also result in focal points and networks. This maxim is not a contradiction to the demand for diversity of the working areas. However, diversity does meet its boundaries where it goes so far that an individual institution is working in an isolated manner and the establishment of productive local cross connections is not possible anymore.
I know that there are subject areas where this networking concept is less accepted than in others. In engineering, biosciences and natural sciences the advantages for the individual are too obvious to require much persuasion for research in networks. In the humanities the concept of networking is however generally met with scepticism and is considered by some to be unacademic. Here it is my experience from the work for the DFG, the longest time by the way was spent under a humanities scholar as president, which convinced me to recommend that these subject areas too should have more courage for research and teaching in networking structures.

I would like to pre-empt a misunderstanding: networked research and establishment of focal points are often equated with programme research. However much I am in favour of networked research, as reserved am I towards programme research. Creative research is like water finding its way freely in accordance with the characteristics of the terrain. It can only develop without contextual prerequisites. Networked research must thus formulate its contextual requirements so loosely that the free development of the individual research project is not impeded. It is thus in conflict with the programme research so beloved by the planners, which focuses research onto relevant contents. AIDS, gender research, cancer, mad cow disease, senile dementia, climate research and nanotechnologies are named as keywords here. These topics are of course relevant, but whether they are respectively ready for great scientific breakthroughs is a completely different question, and that the hopes placed in programme research have often been dashed is well-known. That programme research does not exclude creative research is certainly also a truism. Necessity has pushed many of us to become somewhat masterful at driving forward self-determined research goals under the cloak of a huge variety of undertakings belonging to programme research.

Lastly: scientific progress and in particular the great breakthroughs rarely occur in the centre of the specialist subjects, but frequently at their margins, where the subjects touch one another. The University should take this into account and through a considered appointment policy create the prerequisites for networked research across the subject boundaries.

A further experience also closely connected to Göttingen for me concerns the thrust that can be triggered through targeted encouragement of initiatives by the University Management and the relevant ministry.

Without going into details: During the initiatives for the erection of the joint animal house of the University and the Max-Planck-Society and Göttingen’s Centre for Molecular Biosciences, University Management and the relevant ministry provided both decisive suggestions as well as the encouragement particularly important during the early phase of such projects. It is possible that without their support neither one nor the other project would have survived the internal conflicts in the Faculties. The same applied recently to the International Master / Doctorate course “Molecular Biology”. I hope that we will remain to be always open towards such initiatives and develop imagination in supporting them. As University we are reliant on individuals, who, alone or in small groups, find themselves willing to develop and implement new initiatives, even if the greatest beneficiaries of these initiatives will often be others and not the individuals themselves.

Three requests to higher education policy of the State of Lower Saxony

I have already had several opportunities to explain where I would like to place the focal points of my work inwards. These are, to mention only four

• firstly, the recording of performance in research and teaching guided by subject-specific criteria and its transparent, peer-led evaluation, amongst other, to thus support the negotiations on agreed objectives between the University and the State and to support the control of their fulfilment and to place the University’s plan on improved foundations,


• secondly, the performance-oriented allocation of funds within faculties and between faculties through a system that will inevitably produce winners and losers and that provides incentives to attract funds for teaching and research from third parties


• thirdly, the transfer of the autonomy gain which the foundation status has given us in all areas of the University


• and fourthly, a bundle of measures that will strengthen the partnership between teaching staff and students, that will make students feel both welcome at our University and part of a community united by more than the acquisition of topical knowledge.

Today I would like to use the opportunity to speak in front of the Prime Minister and the representatives of higher education policy and higher education administration of our State to express three requests.
With its foundation in the 18th century the University of Göttingen is a comparatively young university in the European cultural arena. It succeeded in obtaining an excellent reputation in the shortest amount of time. Today it is anchored in the consciousness of the academic world as one of Germany’s great research universities. On looking back one can see that academic excellence and size have at all times been precious but highly perishable goods. Heydays were followed by periods of downturns and resurgences, even in the most successful Faculties. The history of this University is however distinguished by the fact that Göttingen’s academics always succeeded in making their University with its research output the centre of their subjects on a national and international level.

When balancing the current situation we do of course find downsides as well as upsides. However, what matters is that even today excellence and competence in large and important areas are gathered in Göttingen, and that they stand up to every national comparison and have international recognition. We will thus face up to the competition for funds for leading universities, which we do need and which will hopefully soon be in existence. The first request to higher education policy of the State of Lower Saxony is to support Göttingen in competition with other universities in the State as a research university where knowledge in all its depth and with the diversity of specialist disciplines characteristic of a classical university is taught and can be developed further. Göttingen’s name is associated with this claim in the academic world on an international scale. This legacy from nearly 300 years of history contains the joint efforts of generations of researchers and numerous earlier sovereigns and State governments.
The second request refers to the foundation status. The foundation as provider of the University is a young construction, which during its introduction enjoyed broad support in the parliament of our State and in the Senate of our University, but which also met scepticism and even resistance, not least from the University itself. During a phase in which the foundation status is naturally more able to refer to the hopes and expectations placed into this model than to practical successes, it is particularly endangered and requires special protection. In recent months the impression that the State government considers the foundation status more of a label and is seeking to withdraw the originally intended increase in autonomy in favour of direct control was solidified for far too many people. Key words in this context are detailed control such as through the university optimisation concept, short-term budgeting and budget reservations intervening in closed agreements on objectives. Even if this notion is incorrect it still corresponds with the perceived impression, is effective and weakens the University.

We ask policy to give the model of foundation status a chance, particularly in the context of a university offering a full range of subjects, such as Göttingen. The opening of the foundation option was a courageous step into the future. This courage must not leave us on the path of implementation.
My third request: please develop a process that directly rewards the performance in the universities. Incentives and award processes are some of the most effective control measures when aiming to increase university performance. There is a tried and tested instrument for directly rewarding performance in research. It is called the Overhead, or, as described recently by Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker, a research premium, granted by the State, of approved third party funds.
In a transparent competition accepted by the affected parties this instrument would promote those universities of the State with strong-performing research and that are thus successful in attracting additional third party funding for this purpose. The Overhead promotes proven excellence, independent of location, independent of programmes, in all subject disciplines, based on the subject-specific funding requirement. The Overhead strengthens the researcher who attracts the third party funding, and the university which makes its resources available to him or her. The attraction of the Overhead for approved third party funding lies in it promoting research at universities in a targeted, performance-related way without additional administrative effort for the State and as effectively as the State’s resources respectively allow.

Finally, allow me to state, prompted by the general pessimistic mood in the media and the scarce resources: it is true that the universities as nearly all educational institutions are grossly under-financed and that we are not limiting our requirements sufficiently in favour of the next generation. It is however just as true that the standard of education of our University graduates is much higher than public opinion leads us to believe.
An example: In the natural sciences the graduates are released into a global market. If our graduates apply for positions in the United States they are preferentially accepted. This can only mean that they are well-educated. Anyone who has been able to gather comparative experiences with individuals educated here and elsewhere values the depth and breadth of the education here. This should not conceal our shortcomings in looking after the students. The view over and above the borders does however teach us that we do not need to reinvent the spirit of the University. The ways and the means of keeping this spirit alive and allowing it to become effective under constantly changing prevailing conditions do however need to be rediscovered all the time.


Publication:
University Excellence and its Requirements, in Göttinger Universitätsreden [Speeches of the University of Göttingen], (ed.) Academic Celebration for the handing over of the Presidential Office in the Aula on the 10th of January 2005, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, pp. 49-59.