It is simply unacceptable that institutions of higher learning can no longer fulfill their teaching and research responsibilities because of growing overcrowding, while the dual education system continues to lose its significance, and while, year after year, more than 100,000 apprenticeships remain unfilled in the old federal states.
It also cannot be right when college students exceed apprentices in ever greater numbers. Of course, it is difficult to draw comparisons because we all know that higher education lasts longer than an apprenticeship. But when there are 1.8 million college students and only 1.6 million apprentices, then we have to stop and think. This figure should convince everyone that something needs to be done.
Here in Germany we allow extremely long training periods for young college graduates – extraordinarily long when compared with our neighbors in the EC, Europe, and the United States – and this considerably diminishes the opportunities for young Germans in the future European Union.
On average, 27 percent of college students leave school without a degree, in some departments up to fifty percent. For me, this is not primarily a question of money; rather the problem is that these young people have a depressing experience and squander their best years of learning in this way.
In a Europe that is growing together, young Germans must remain competitive with their peers in other countries. That is why education is a matter for the state as a whole, with all due respect for the federative division of competencies.
I would like to deliberately broach a subject that is generally avoided, namely, the question of performance and effectiveness in the area of higher education. This is usually discussed only with regard to the students. I think that effectively streamlining the course of study must be one joint goal of any comprehensive reform. But I [also] think that reviewing faculty performance at German institutions of higher education must also be part of this reform.
In other countries – for example, in the U.S., but not only in the U.S. – faculty assessments always include student evaluations and thus take a professor’s pedagogical skills into account as well.
Of course, I also know that such examples cannot be automatically transferred to Germany, since there are two different systems in the United States, private universities and taxpayer-supported state schools.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that it has also become necessary here to introduce comparative performance evaluations of university professors and of universities themselves. It is unacceptable that comparable university departments, within a single federal state, have totally disparate graduation times – and this, in turn, has nothing to do with the party of the state government. It must be possible to bring the issue of achievement evaluation, also in this area, into the public discussion.
In this context, I would like to turn to another item that has been on the agenda for ten years but hasn’t really gotten anywhere under the leadership of any of the major political parties, and that is the question of shortening the length of study at Gymnasium [college-preparatory secondary school] from nine years to eight. A decision is long overdue.
The standard in the new federal states is eight years. Naturally, they will not change this. In the end, no one has been able to explain to me – not even my respected Bavarian friends – why someone needs nine years at a Gymnasium in Freilassing but only eight years at the Academic Gymnasium in Salzburg [Austria] only 20 kilometers away. I think the decision is also long overdue.
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