New billions for education

The 1.9bn Eur ($2.3bn) project, which was agreed Thursday after months of wrangling between federal and state officials, aims to keep Germany's universities competitive in the face of international competition from global heavyweights like Harvard and Stanford.

Germany's publicly-funded research institutes, among them the famed Max Planck and Fraunhofer Societies, will also benefit from the initiative, said German Education Minister Edelgard Bulmahn.

Under the new plan, up to ten top universities will receive annual grants averaging 21 million Eur ($25 million) starting in 2006. A procedure for choosing grant recipients will be in place in time to begin distributing the first awards by next summer, said officials.

Research institutes can meanwhile expect to see their funding rise by at least 3% annually through 2010.

"We are entering a decade of innovation with the excellence initiative for universities and the pact for the largest research organizations," Bulmahn told reporters Thursday in Berlin.

The initiative came amid long-standing concerns about the waning international competitiveness of Germany's largely public-financed university system.

Germany's universities were once envied the world over and even served as a model for many U.S. institutions in the 19th century. Today, however, they are not thought to have lost ground to institutions in the United States and Great Britain.

Money is seen as a big part of the problem as German universities have until recently been banned from charging tuition fees under most circumstances.

Yet that, too, is changing. A number of federal states, mainly those governed by the conservative opposition Christian Democrats, want to begin charging fees as early as the upcoming fall semester.

While modest by U.S. standards at about $650 per semester, the fees face bitter opposition from students and education officials.

Proponents meanwhile say that fees are needed to improve the quality of programs offered at German universities — and will encourage students to study more efficiently in a country where the average student takes six years to complete a standard degree.

Links:

Protests over tuition fees (from Germany Info)