IHT: Germany fights to reform higher education - by Mark Landler

Mrs. Angela Merkel
For the compltete report in the IHT click on this link

Germany fights to reform higher education - by Mark Landler

KARLSRUHE, Germany: At the university in this humdrum German town, there are no decorous strands of ivy on the 1960s buildings, nor is there the kind of scholarly patina that blankets Heidelberg, the older, more celebrated university just up the road. Yet last week, when a German government committee anointed three institutions as elite universities - a sort of Teutonic Ivy League - Karlsruhe made the cut while Heidelberg did not. The other winners were the University of Munich and the Technical University, also in Munich. The long-awaited decision, which entitles the schools to more than EURO 100 million each over the next five years, sent spirits soaring at Karlsruhe, sinking at Heidelberg, and set off a national discussion about the nature of excellence, a new focus on technical and scientific disciplines, and the wisdom of culling the great from the merely good. Germany, like other European countries, is adopting separate bachelor's and master's degrees. It is also shifting authority away from powerful faculty senates to university presidents and their boards.

"We're moving from a Republic of Professors to an entrepreneurial university," said Peter Frankenberg, the minister who oversees universities in Baden-Württemberg, home of Heidelberg and Karlsruhe.