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"Why should I apply to university when I can earn more in industry?"

Wissenschaftzeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG) - a word monster that has been used since the loud protest of young scientists under the hashtag</p>What could be improved about the proposal? Questions to Peter-André Alt, the outgoing president of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK).

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"Why should I apply to university when I can earn more in industry?"

Wissenschaftzeitvertragsgesetz (WissZeitVG) - a word monster that has been used since the loud protest of young scientists under the hashtag

What could be improved about the proposal? Questions to Peter-André Alt, the outgoing president of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK).

WORLD: Professor Alt, why are there so few permanent positions in the German science system below the professorship? And how is it in comparable countries? After all, we are talking about employees who not only write qualification papers, but also do a large part of the apprenticeship and take on other tasks.

Peter-André Alt: That is definitely part of the qualification for a professorship and any other permanent scientific position. The question is nevertheless entirely valid. First of all, we have a very high doctoral rate in Germany, higher than in the USA, for example, where the medical doctorate is awarded upon completion of the course. Second, we currently have around 50,000 professorships, a number that has increased by 7,000 in the past ten years. That's not even close to being the case in other countries. Great Britain is often used as a possible alternative model to the German higher education system, where there are more permanent positions below professorships: for example lecturers and readers; but also significantly fewer professorships. The fact that we traditionally have more professorships in Germany makes the postdoc phase more risky. However, the transition can be made easier by more systematic advertising of junior professorships with tenure track. After a limited period of probation, there is then the chance of receiving a lifetime professorship.

World: There should be German universities without permanent positions in the mid-level faculty.

Alt: In the diverse German higher education system, that's not as surprising as it might sound. In the area of ​​universities of applied sciences, for example, a mid-level position was not originally planned in this form - at some universities the proportion of permanent positions in addition to the professorship is again 40 to 50 percent. The chances of getting a professorship in Germany are significantly greater than in other systems. But that is at the expense of medium-sized construction sites with long-term prospects. Every year around 30,000 doctoral students successfully complete their doctorate in Germany. However, only 1,500 to 2,000 professorships are vacant and newly advertised each year. In addition, there are perhaps 1,500 permanent positions at universities and 400 positions at non-university research institutions. Even if only a tenth of those with a doctorate are interested in a university career, it doesn't work out. After all, we can't just count on doctoral students from a single year. So it's a risk.

WORLD: Naively asked: does it take so many people with a doctorate? And especially so many who have habilitated?

Alt: The habilitation is on the decline and is no longer an indispensable qualification for an academic career. It is often replaced by equivalent services. In fact, only academics in the humanities and law are systematically habilitated today. But there are still a large number of doctorates, and the academic system must face up to the debate critically as to whether this makes sense. I myself suggested a reduction in the number of doctorates in a newspaper article a few years ago and got myself into a lot of trouble. It is of course true that the doctoral candidates have acquired a high degree of independence in independently organized work processes. This is also in high demand in industry. The unemployment rate for the highly and highly qualified is 2.6 percent - that's almost full employment.

WORLD: Does that actually require a long-term doctorate?

Alt: The question is whether you can't also learn to do independent scientific work for such needs in well-designed master's degree programs. The problem is that the high number of doctorates often arouses interest in an academic career, which is only open to a few due to the numbers mentioned.

WORLD: The BMBF has presented new key points for the Science Time Contract Act, which have been met with such fierce criticism that State Secretary Sabine Döring has now tweeted that the amendment is going “back to the assembly hall”. Has the ministry also consulted with the German Rectors' Conference?

Alt: Yes, as with all stakeholders, very intensively. We have been in very close and good contact with the BMBF as part of the usual hearing process. The responsible parliamentary state secretary, Jens Brandenburg, carried out the process very responsibly and taking all interests into account - incidentally, this also explicitly excludes the positions of

WORLD: A minimum fixed-term period of three years, a maximum of six years for doctoral positions and a maximum fixed-term position for postdocs of three years are the core of this proposal. Those who get a dissertation position are given a little more security, postdocs lose time for qualification. The overall qualification duration is also reduced.

Alt: We have to make a distinction. Today, more than ever, promotions are based on positions. The old scholarship model is on the decline. Universities have also introduced posts in third-party funded graduate colleges and schools in order to create greater social security commitments. It is good that the initial contracts are not too brief, but that a period of three years is created that allows the work to be carried out on a solid planning basis. It is also good that this phase is limited to six years, as before, but contracts are initially concluded for three years and then extended if necessary. We mustn't forget that doctorate periods are steadily increasing despite good working conditions.

WORLD: 5.7 years on average, you hear. Why is that, if not the working conditions?

Alt: I think that we supervise a lot of doctoral students extremely well, especially in the graduate programs. They also have no service obligations to professors. If, despite this, it takes five years or more to complete a doctorate, then graduate colleges and schools have to ask themselves whether they simply want to accept it. It seems to me that, above all, the demands that doctoral students themselves place on their work are constantly increasing - and that supervisors could do more here.

WORLD: What should you do?

Alt: University teachers who set dissertation topics or accept them for supervision should consider whether they should be made more manageable and feasible. A dissertation should demonstrate the ability to work independently and scientifically, not answer all open questions on a research topic.

WORLD: The three-year fixed term for postdocs has been particularly heavily criticized. You yourself have already raised objections. May I ask how long it took you to complete your own habilitation?

Alt: It took me five years to write my habilitation thesis, as long as my temporary contract as a research assistant ran. I taught two hours a week, didn't publish anything else and was able to concentrate on my extensive research project with reading remote source texts. At the end there was a 700-page work on baroque literature, which earned me a professorship. Even today, it takes far more than three years for a habilitation. Now there is a mechanism for portability of employment periods in the law. If the doctoral degree takes five years on average, then in the current draft there would be four years for the postdoc phase. That's better than the three years left over from a six-year PhD, but it's not enough.

WORLD: What is the idea behind the new time limit?

Alt: The proposal basically assumes that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And the thought is probably that the fewer we give fixed-term contracts and the fewer opportunities we allow for fixed-term contracts, the faster scientists with a doctorate will find a permanent position. But the reality is different. Permanent positions are not available to the extent that one might wish.

WORLD: The appointment process for a professorship often takes up to a year.

Alt: I think the most important thing is that we understand the postdoc phase as a corridor phase that should lead to the junior professorship with tenure track, where the appointment procedures don't take that long. But it is true that the procedures for academic self-supplement, especially for permanent professorships, must be shorter so that young scientists can see more quickly what opportunities they really have.

WORLD: Many had hoped that something would also be said about permanent positions in the draft law. Is it even possible to fix it this way?

Old: Not with the WissZeitVG. This only sets out the nationwide framework for the functionally required right to set a special time limit for science. And whether permanent employment requirements can be regulated in state law, as happened in Berlin, has not yet been finally clarified, because the Federal Constitutional Court has been called upon to do so.

WORLD: And if a law could regulate that?

Alt: Then the question would still remain as to whether the universities would become more capable of acting as a result. Certainly not budgetary. The risk is that the universities will subsequently hire fewer applicants because they fear the financial consequences. Rightly so, but that would be fatal. The

WORLD: What is a viable way?

Alt: You have to recognize that a lot has changed in the system as a whole. We have significantly more tenure track professorships. There used to be only junior professorships with a maximum term of six years, then it was over and the job holders had to apply for another vacancy. We now know of universities that fill up to 50 percent of their professorships via tenure track. Be it that they replace a W3 professorship that is currently expiring due to retirement with a W1 position and, after six years, in the event that performance agreements have been fulfilled, in a W3 position. Or that they convert a position from the mid-level faculty into a junior professorship and then say: If the W3 position is vacant in six years and everything has gone well, they will switch to the W3. This makes it possible to plan your career and allows you to start a professorship earlier. It's actually exactly what the

WORLD: Why can't you imagine research and teaching supported by permanent positions?

Old: Because those who start in such a position are usually 35, at most 40 years old. You stay in that position for 25 years. Scientific work is usually fulfilling, so we don't really have any fluctuation and we can't offer this position again for decades. This is a huge problem. Subsequent generations of scientists would then have no chance of employment and probation.

WORLD: A problem in that video by the BMBF that the

Alt: Let's take an industrial company for comparison. There, employees are given a permanent position after a probationary period. There are different hierarchical levels, you can move up. Some of the banks have been doing it for decades now, paying severance pay to employees who have arrived in upper-middle management in their mid-50s so that younger colleagues can move up. We do not have that. Not even this ascension logic. That's more common in the British system: first a lecturer position, then a reader position. But there are far fewer opportunities to get a professorship.

Although we could completely rebuild our system, we would then have a really broad, permanently employed middle faculty. That was in the 1950s with the academic councils and some of the dysfunctionalities that came with them. But I don't see any opportunities there because we also combine certain research and management achievements with the professorship. We have increased the number of professorships in recent decades rather than the number of permanent positions.

WORLD: A large number of professors also criticize the key points in a statement. One of their arguments is that looking after constantly changing employees comes at the expense of one's own teaching and research activities.

Alt: Well, the university administrations themselves do not specify short contract periods. Applications for employment are submitted directly by the professors. So far, there has not been any noticeable movement by the professors to change this practice. The HRK, in turn, requested such a bottom-up process from the faculties back in 2014 in order to develop sustainable permanent position concepts. In the last few decades we have seen an extensive shift in research funding to third-party funds.

More and more careers then run through third-party funded projects. Sometimes with very short time limits, because this is the only way to give promising young scientists a chance and to raise the workforce to a tolerable level. Of course that is unsatisfactory. That is why the universities want to ensure that there are no short-term contracts for doctorates and that postdoc positions do not normally fall below the three-year period. Otherwise the system is constantly busy with young people applying. Experts, interim reports and evaluation reports are constantly being written. You really can't justify that any further.

WORLD: Andreas Keller, the deputy chairman of the GEW, spoke in an interview with the “taz” about a feared shortage of skilled workers at the universities, especially in the MINT subjects.

Alt: I would like to see the empirical basis of this argument, which Mr. Keller often put forward. All I know is that we also have a high number of applications when we advertise temporary positions. We may have an issue with compensation competition. When a mid-level position in computer science is advertised, there are many who say: Why should I apply to the university when I can earn more in industry? The argument has to be: I want to do science because it interests me. In return, I have more leeway to pursue my ideas. Because I still have it, despite all the problems the system currently has. I still don't see that we have a skilled labor problem. In any case, I would assume that behind the word "attractive working conditions" there is actually a cultural change.

WORLD: You have to explain that.

Alt: That has something to do with the issue of work-life balance and the life plans of young people who are highly qualified but cannot work the whole week or only want to do one job, but rather have time for care obligations, social commitment or Claim forms of self-realization. This is a very legitimate perspective that society and employers need to respond to. At the same time, it poses a problem for science because, where it is really research-intensive, it is also extremely time-consuming. Experiments, literature reception, empirical surveys and all of that takes an incredible amount of time. Science is global. We need to take cognizance of more and more sources of information if we want to do our research well. This can be compensated for by working groups, part-time models or the like, but it means an enormous cultural change for science.

WORLD: How can the science system deal with such life plans?

Old: With less competition and more teamwork. It's already the case that teamwork plays an important role because that requires the complexity of the research. Research performance is becoming less and less individually attributable, but rather that of a team. But that would also mean that we would have to reorganize our research processes.

WORLD: With more professional planning, time-consuming work in the science system could become more attractive for those who actually want to invest less time, right?

Old: Yes. I often have the impression that much of what we are currently discussing is also about the question: Do I want this competition? My argument in a number of discussions is that a tenure-track professorship is a great option because it opens up clear perspectives. Then the answer is often yes, but it's incredibly competitive and creates pressure. In essence, it is about our life plans and role models. Young scientists must fundamentally ask themselves whether they even want to enter this system, which actually demands a lot in order for scientific excellence and innovation to become possible.

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