Saving on education: University of Hamburg is cutting study places

Hamburg's Green Science Senator Maryam Blumenthal had already suggested it in the spring: If the University of Hamburg doesn't get there with its money, it should cut study places. After that, no one talked about this unpopular idea anymore. The taz now has the latest target and performance agreement (ZLV) between the city and the university. According to this, the number of places for new students is actually falling significantly, from the current 9,485 to 8,810 in 2028.

If you compare this number with the 9,823 new students in 2025, the number of places available at the institution, which was recently recognized as a “university of excellence” again, drops by over 1,000. The 14-page document with the explosive “key figures” was signed on August 11th by Maryam Blumenthal and university president Hauke ​​Heekeren and has not yet been published.

Heekeren himself warned about the bottlenecks in a fire letter a year ago. The text now states that the University of Hamburg will face “financial challenges” in the coming years. It will receive around 365 million euros for 2027, including a special allocation in the construction sector, and in 2028 it will receive around 360 million euros, without that construction allocation. Either way, the development of financing will not be adapted to the “growing tasks and necessary investments,” they write. The university is responding to this with “openness and creative desire”. A structural process will be initiated to create a “resilient, modern and efficiently organized university”.

The key figures differentiate between places for first-year students and master's students. There will be 556 fewer places in bachelor's and exam courses by 2028, a reduction of 8.5 percent. There are 119 fewer master's degree programs, a decrease of 4.1 percent. Since there will be fewer Bachelor graduates in the future, a further reduction in Master's positions is expected from 2031.

Target and performance agreements are made every two years. Unlike the last one for the years 2025 and 2026, this new ZLV does not yet contain an agreement that determines how the capacity is distributed across the seven faculties of law, economics and social sciences, business administration, educational science, psychology and movement science, humanities as well as mathematics, computer science and natural sciences. The document is being dispensed with because the ongoing structural process could also have an impact on the number of beginners, write Blumenthal and Heekeren. This will be “concluded subsequently”.

Heekeren's spokesman Alexander Lemonakis confirms that there will be a reduction in beginner places. The aim is to align this with the available teaching capacity and thus “ensure quality and studyability”. The spokesman emphasizes that the University of Hamburg will remain the “largest university in the city” in the future.

The aim is to enable all students to study “outstanding quality”, says Blumenthal’s spokeswoman Helen Hahne. To this end, target and performance agreements would be made with all universities. The Hafencity University will also cut 60 study places by 2028 and the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) 220.

This reduction is not obvious from an educational policy perspective. The Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) expects student numbers to remain stable. And the KMK forecast for high school graduates even predicts a significant increase for Hamburg, from 9,400 in 2026 to 10,100 in 2027 to 2029. If this happens, there would have to be more places, not fewer.

The left-wing MP Xenija Melnik-Üzüm says: “Now what the senator gave to the University of Hamburg in an interview in March as kindly meant ‘advice’ is coming to light: the reduction of study places.” However, she is irritated that the numbers do not correspond to the city's budget, which the MPs discussed in the science committee a week ago. “Senator Blumenthal needs to come clean and explain transparently what she plans to do with the university,” says Melnik-Üzüm.

In their opinion, such a reduction in study places would be a disservice to Hamburg as a science location. Since the said agreement on the distribution of the cuts among the faculties in the ZLV is still missing, the left-wing politician even fears that the last word has not been spoken in the structural process and that there is a risk of further loss of study places. "However, this will not help the precarious situation the university finds itself in. The appropriate resources simply have to be made available."

"We think that reducing study places is sending the wrong signal from the city. This violates the right to education and must be urgently corrected," says Franziska Hildebrandt from the Working Group on Financing, in which students and teachers have been campaigning for adequate financing for universities since the spring. When the budget was discussed in the Science Committee a week ago, Heekeren said that reducing university places would be socially problematic. The presidents of the other universities have also expressed their dissatisfaction with the situation.

The financing group is not yet giving up hope. A large demonstration is planned for the end of November, says Hildebrandt, against the cuts and for full funding for all of the city's universities. This is just before the budget is passed.