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Federal President Roman Herzog Calls for a Reform of the German Education System (November 5, 1997)

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Fifth, I would like an education system that promotes competition. If we want to encourage high performance, then we have to make differences in performance more visible. This starts in the schools. Let’s give them greater responsibility once again! For example, why shouldn’t they participate in selecting the faculty? I have also never understood why teachers and professors have to be civil servants, why administrations have to be forced into the straitjacket of a government accounting system, why school principals have less decision-making power when it comes to materials and personnel than clerks in a screw factory do.

And why have we shied away from having our schools participate in comparisons that would promote competition? In the United States, President Clinton is in the process of introducing a national achievement test for schoolchildren, so that parents throughout the country know which schools are good and which are less good. Couldn’t we also adopt that model? Couldn’t that help turn good schools into models and encourage other schools to improve their offerings?

It is high time for institutions of higher learning, in particular, to abandon the myth of supposed equality. Usually this is nothing more than a fiction that has nothing to do with reality. Let’s be realistic: nowadays no one will get a job in the private sector solely on the basis of a piece of paper with a grade on it. Everyone everywhere knows that there are great differences between individual academic departments and universities. This applies as much to research achievements as to equipment and personnel, course offerings, and grades. Many companies have already developed elaborate assessment procedures, because they know that there are great disparities in the training received by their applicants.

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We need to finally make quality differences transparent again, and we also need to ensure that high achievement is rewarded and bad achievement is censured by the withdrawal of resources. I know that the thought of rankings triggers fear and discomfort. But first of all we owe it to the students, who need to know, even before they begin their studies, where they should best invest their time and effort. And second, the institutions of higher education also owe it to their public sponsors. Third, rankings will come in any case: if universities refuse to accept rankings, then they will come from the outside, for example, from the media – and then the criteria will likely be dubious!

Universities need to be able to distinguish themselves through their faculty, curricula, and ideas more than they have up until now. As part of this, they also need to be involved in student admissions, and they need the option of giving greater or lesser weight to certain subjects tested in the Abitur [i.e. university qualification exam]. We finally have to accept that students have different aptitudes and abilities, even if they have the same overall grade on the Abitur, and that the relevance of individual subjects covered in the exam differs according to the student’s desired field of study, be it German, medicine, or law. To be sure, the selection of students should not become an end in itself. The point is more to give students a clear sign: we want you and therefore wish to assume the great responsibility [of attending to you during] the most valuable period of your life. We will attend to your needs by giving you the best possible counseling and oversight from the outset.

If we say that the institutions of higher education should distinguish themselves through competition and should become more effective, then we also need to finally release them from external bureaucratic control. They must be given the freedom to structure themselves the way that the world’s most successful universities do.

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