Awarded universities of excellence: money for the universities in Freiburg, Jena and Cologne

dpa | Three further German universities and two university associations will be able to bear the title of “University of Excellence” in the future and will benefit from funding worth millions. Federal Research Minister Dorothee Bär (CSU) and Lower Saxony's Science Minister Falko Mohrs (SPD) as deputy chairman of the Joint Science Conference (GWK) announced the names of the universities at a press conference in Bonn.

These are the universities in Freiburg, Jena and Cologne. The Rhine-Main universities in Darmstadt, Mainz and Frankfurt am Main as well as the TU Dortmund and the University of Bochum (“Ruhr Innovation Lab”) are each new to the funding as a network. For individual universities, the title means funding of up to 15 million euros annually, for associations up to 28 million euros.

Nine universities and one university network are already receiving special funding from the federal and state governments as universities of excellence: Aachen, Bonn, Dresden, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe and Tübingen. Munich is represented twice with the TU and the LMU, as well as an association of the three Berlin universities FU, HU and TU. Their funding was extended for a further seven years in the spring. Universities of excellence must undergo a review of their funding requirements every seven years.

In addition to funding as a university of excellence, there is also funding for so-called clusters as part of the so-called excellence strategy. This involves special research projects at individual universities or at several universities together. Last year, projects at 43 universities in 13 federal states were selected for this funding. Only those who can demonstrate a certain number of clusters have a chance of becoming a university of excellence.

Every year, the federal and state governments provide 687 million euros as part of the Excellence Strategy. 75 percent of the funding comes from the federal government and 25 percent from the state in which the institution is based. The excellence competitions were started years ago, among other things, to polish the international reputation and image of German institutions. According to the Federal Statistical Office, there are a total of 421 universities in Germany.