SRHE Blog

The Society for Research into Higher Education

Tag Archives: German HE


by Leave a comment

Collegiality and competition in German Centres of Excellence

by Lautaro Vilches

Collegiality, although threatened by increasing competitive pressures and described as a slippery and elastic concept, remains a powerful ideal underpinning academic and intellectual practices. Drawing on two empirical studies, this blog examines the relationships between collegiality and competition in Centres of Excellence (CoEs) in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Germany. These CoEs are conceptualised as a quasi-departmental new university model that contrasts with the ‘university of chairs’, which characterises the old Humboldtian university model, organised around chairs led by professors. Hence my research question: How do academics experience collegiality, and how does it relate to competition, within CoEs in the SSH?

In 2006, the government launched the Excellence Strategy (then known as the Excellence Initiative), which includes a scheme providing long-term funding for Centres of Excellence. Notably, this scheme extends beyond the traditionally more collaborative Natural Sciences, to encompass the Social Sciences and Humanities. Germany, therefore, offers a unique case to explore transformations of collegiality amidst co-existing and overlapping university models. What, then, are the key features of these models?

In the old model of the ‘university of chairs’ the chair constitutes the central organisational unit of the university, with each one led by a single professor. Central to this model is the idea of collegial leadership according to which professors govern the university autonomously, a practice that can be traced back to the old scholastic guild of the Middle Ages. During the eighteenth century, German universities underwent a process of modernisation influenced by Renaissance ideals, culminating in the establishment of University of Berlin in Prussia in 1810 by Wilhelm von Humboldt. By the late nineteenth century, the Humboldtian model of the university had become highly influential, as it offered an organisational template in which the ideals of academic autonomy, academic freedom and the  integration of research and teaching were institutionalised.

Within the university of chairs, collegiality is effectively ‘contained’ and enacted within individual chairs. In this structure, professors have no formal superiors and academic staff are directly subordinate to a single professor (as chair holder) – not an institute or faculty. As a result, the university of chairs is characterised by several small and steep hierarchies.

In recent decades – alongside the rise of the United States as the hegemonic power – the Anglo-American departmental model spread across the world, a shift that is associated with the entrepreneurial transformation of universities as they respond to growing competitive pressures.

Remarkably, CoEs in the SSH in Germany are organised as ‘quasi-departments’ resembling a multidisciplinary Anglo-American department. They are very large in comparison with other collaborative grants, often comprising more than 100 affiliated researchers. They are structured around several ‘Research Areas’ and led by 25 Principal Investigators (mostly professors) who must agree on the implementation of the multidisciplinary and integrated research programme on which the CoE is based.

The historical implications of this new model cannot be overstated. CoEs appear to operate as Trojan horses: cloaked in the prestige of excellence, they have introduced a fundamentally different organisational model into the German university of chairs, an institution that has endured over centuries.

Against the backdrop of these two models, what are the implications for collegiality and its relation to competition? A few clarifications are necessary. First, much of the research on collegiality has focused on governance, ignoring that collegiality is also practised ‘on the ground’. Here, I will define collegiality (a) as form of ‘leadership and governance’, involving relations among leaders as well as interactions between leaders and those they govern; (b) as an ‘intellectual practice’ that can be best observed in the enactments of collaborative research; and (c) as a form of ‘citizenship’, involving practices that signify belonging to the CoE and its academic community.

Second, adopting this broader understanding requires acknowledging that collegiality is not only experienced by professors (in governing collegialy the university) but also by the ‘invisible’ academic demos, namely Early Career Researchers (ECRs). Although often employed in precarious positions, ECRS are nonetheless significant members of the academic community, in particular in CoEs, which explicitly prioritise the training of ECRs as a core objective. Whilst ECRs are committed full time to the CoE and sustain much of its collaborative research activity, professors remain simultaneously bound to the duties of their respective positions as chairs.

A third clarification concerns our normative assumptions underpinning collegiality and its relationship to competition. Collegiality is sometimes idealised as an unambiguously positive value and practice in academia, whilst competition – in contrast – is seen as a threat to collegiality. However, this idealised depiction tends to underplay, for example, the role of hierarchies in academia and often invokes an indeterminate past – perhaps somewhere in the 1960s – when universities were governed autonomously by male professors and generously funded through block grants – largely protected from competition pressures or external scrutiny.

These contextual conditions have evidently changed over recent decades: competition, both at institutional and individual terms, has intensified in academia, and CoE schemes exemplify this shift. CoE members, especially ECRs, are therefore embedded in multiple and overlapping competitions: at the institutional level through the CoE’s race for excellence; and at the individual level, through the competition for getting a position in the CoE, as well as for grants, publications, and networks necessary for career advancement.

How are collegiality and competition intertwined in the CoE? I identify three complex dynamics:

  • ‘The temporal flourishing of intellectual collegiality’ refers to the blooming of collegiality as part of the collaborative research work in the CoE. ECRs describe extensive engagement in organising, leading or co-leading research seminars (alongside PIs or other postdoctoral researchers), co-editing books, developing digital collaborative platforms, inviting researchers from abroad to join the CoE or organising and participating in informal meetings. Within this dynamic, competition is presented as being located ‘outside’ the CoE, temporarily deactivated. However, at the same time, ECRs remain aware of the omnipresence of competition, which ultimately threatens collegial collaboration when career paths, research topics or publications begin to converge. For this reason, intellectual collegiality and competition stand in an exclusionary relationship.
  • ‘The rise of CoE citizenship for the institutional race of excellence’ captures the strong sense of engagement and commitment shown by ECRs (but also professors) towards the CoE. It is expressed through initiatives aimed at enhancing the CoE’s collective research performance, particularly in anticipation of competition for renewed excellence funding. This dynamic reveals that, for the CoE, citizenship and institutional competition are not oppositional but complementary, as collective engagement is mobilised in the service of competitive success.
  • ‘Collegial leadership adapting to multiple competitions’ highlights the plurality of leadership modes, each one responding to different levels and forms of competition. At the level of professors and decision-making processes at the top, traditional collegial governance is ‘overstretched’. Although professors retain full authority, they struggle to reach consensus and to lead these large multidisciplinary centres effectively. This suggests a growing demand for new skills more closely associated with the figure of an academic manager than a professor. The institutional race for excellence thus places considerable strain on collegial governance rooted in the chair-based system. Accordingly, ECRs describe different and, apparently, contradictory modes of collegial leadership. For example, the ‘laissez faire’ mode aligns with the ideals of freedom and autonomy underpinning intellectual collegiality, but also with competition among individuals. They also describe leadership as ‘impositions’, which, on the one hand, erodes trust in professors and decision-making, but, on the other hand, intersects with notions of citizenship that compel ECRs to accept decisions, even when imposed. Yet many ECRs value and expect a more ‘inclusive leadership’ that support the development of intellectual collegiality. Overall, the relationship between collegial leadership and competition is heterogeneous and adaptive, closely intertwined with the preceding dynamics.

How, then, can these dynamics be interpreted together? Overall, the findings suggest that differences between university models matter profoundly for collegiality. Expectations regarding how academics collaborate, participate in governance and decision-making processes and form intellectual communities are embedded in specific institutional contexts.

Regarding the relation between collegiality and competition, I suggest two contrasting interpretations. The first emphasises the flourishing of intellectual collegiality and the emergence of CoE citizenship, understood as a collective, multidisciplinary sense of belonging that is driven by – and complementary to – the institutional race for excellence. The second interpretation, however, views this flourishing as a temporal illusion. From this perspective, competition is omnipresent and stands in a fundamentally exclusionary relationship to collegiality: it threatens intellectual collaboration even when temporarily deactivated; it compels academics to engage in CoE-related work they may not intrinsically value; and it overstretches traditional forms of collegial leadership, promoting managerial modes that erode trust in both academic judgement and decision-making processes. Viewed in this light, competition ultimately poses a threat to collegiality. These rival interpretations may uneasily coexist, and the second one possibly predominates. More research is needed on how organisational contexts affect the relationship between collegiality and competition.

Lautaro Vilches is a researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin and a consultant in higher education. His current research examines the implications of excellence schemes for transforming universities’ organisational arrangements and their effects on academic practices such as collegiality, academic mobility and research collaboration, particularly in the Social Sciences and Humanities. As a consultant he advises universities on advancing strategic change.


by Leave a comment

How individual accommodation creates barriers to the inclusion of students with disabilities

by Pascal Angerhausen and Shweta Mishra

The inclusion of students with disability in higher education

Individual assessment accommodation is a widely used instrument for inclusion of students with disabilities. It aims at reducing barriers and promoting equal participation, by taking into account the individual needs of a person. However, our research in the project SuccessInclusive (ErfolgInklusiv) has shown that it can also create barriers and lead to new forms of exclusion. It shifts the responsibility to the individual and creates an additional bureaucratic burden for students and university staff. Further, there are issues of legitimacy associated with individual accommodation. If some students are treated differently from others, this raises issues of fairness and equality. Lastly, individual accommodation makes students dependent on those who provide it. We therefore urge universities and policy makers to rethink their focus on individual accommodation and prioritize universal design measures.

Individual accommodation and universal design in German higher education

Universities can choose between two different strategies to promote inclusion in higher education. Universal design and individual accommodation. Universal design aims to reduce or eliminate barriers for all, a priori, whereas individual accommodation consists of solutions that meet the individual needs of specific students. Both approaches have their own benefits and problems. Usually, a combination of the two is used to promote inclusion. If we look at German higher education, universal design plays a minor role. Even though universities are obliged to implement universal design measures, these are mostly limited to physical accessibility. Instead, inclusion in German higher education relies heavily on individual accommodation (Gattermann-Kasper/Schütt, 2022; Steinkühler et al, 2023).

Individual responsibility and bureaucratic burden

If students want to use individual accommodation in German higher education, they need to know about their rights. For many students, this is the biggest obstacle to using Disadvantage Compensation, as they either do not know about their rights or see themselves as entitled to it (Steinkühler et al, 2023). Once these barriers have been overcome, they need to apply on the basis of a medically certificated impairment. The application process can cost time, energy and sometimes even money. Students reported a lack of information, long waiting times and unclear bureaucratic processes. Some of them talked of having to travel long distances to see specific doctors who would issue the necessary medical certificates. In some cases, students also had to pay for these certificates themselves. If these students must renew their application every year – as some faculties require – applying for individual accommodation means a great deal of effort to the students and can in itself be a barrier. 

Additionally, individual accommodation involves a great deal of effort not only for the students but also for the university staff. At the German university where we conducted our interviews, each faculty accepts and handles applications on its own. The staff and the responsible professors review the applications, check them for form and plausibility, and must decide, if and to what extent students can be granted individual accommodation. These decisions are often based on previous decisions and experiences, rather than on official guidelines or laws. The small number of cases handled by individual faculties makes it difficult to build up experience and develop best practice. Thus, staff reported of uncertainty in dealing with individual accommodation requests.

The question of legitimacy

The lack of guidelines on the appropriate form and scope of individual accommodation creates uncertainties that undermine its legitimacy. Students who used individual accommodation reported that both, students and lecturers questioned the fairness of their accommodations. For example, fellow students asked them about their “advantage” and asked for advice on how they could get access to it so that their studies would be “easier”. Thus, students with disabilities who use individual accommodation often doubt its fairness and necessity, while simultaneously lacking an objective perspective. Social networks and previous experiences of accommodation can help in legitimizing accommodation and supporting the experience of studying as an equal.

Individual accommodation creates individual dependencies

Students also emphasized that individual accommodation strengthens the influence of individual people. To receive individual accommodation, students become dependent on doctors, university staff, lecturers and professors. While all of these can be helpful – and many students reported of positive and supportive encounters – this dependency can create impossible barriers. Students, whether they experienced negative or positive situations, highlighted this dependency as problematic. At every step, individuals can act as gatekeepers and prevent them from receiving the accommodations they need to rightfully study. For example, a student reported that he has to write several emails before every exam just to make sure the lecturers organize the accommodations that he is entitled to – and still does not always receive them. Another student was told by the university staff that the accommodation they requested would not be necessary, even though they provided a medical certificate. Many students shared stories of just being ignored by their lecturers, or of lecturers telling them that they did not have the resources to provide appropriate accommodations. Thus, individual accommodation was often experienced as creating an additional work load for the lecturers. In the worst case, these experiences can lead to students dropping out and missing the chance to pursue an academic degree; which is directly linked to the opportunity for students with disabilities to live a decent and independent life.

Accessing individual accommodation requires individual resources

Lastly, our interviews showed that the process of accessing individual accommodation requires resources that are unequally distributed. Students from academic backgrounds, with extensive financial resources or extended social networks are better equipped to access individual accommodations. They can get a second opinion from another doctor, receive information on how to formulate applications, how to appeal or even legal advice. Further, dealing with the problems of gatekeeping also appears to be a gendered issue. Women in particular reported being doubted by others. For some, this went as far as medical gaslighting, the experience of being systematically doubted by medical professionals. Some of those who experienced these doubts resigned themselves when they encountered someone who did not want to believe or support them, rather than fight for their rights. Thus, not all students have equal access to individual accommodation. For some, receiving information about their rights, attaining a medical certificate, applying for individual accommodation,or dealing with gatekeepers is more problematic than for others. So, while other researchers have highlighted differences between students with obvious and stable disabilities and those with invisible and variable disabilities (Goldberg, 2016), our research showed that social networks, academic background, and gender of the students play an important role in the use of individual accommodation.

Concluding remarks

While we have focussed on the ways in which individual accommodation hinders inclusion, students and university staff also emphasized the positive aspects of individual accommodation. If there is a supportive culture and university staff have adequate resources, focussing on the individual needs allows them to find appropriate solutions and highlights the individual situation of each student. Students can feel heard and their disadvantages can be properly compensated for. However, this is rather the ideal case scenario. In our interviews, students reported a lack of a supportive culture in many disciplines, and in society in general, while the staff and lecturers experienced individual accommodation as demanding in terms of time and resources. We can therefore conclude that relying on individual accommodation to include students with disabilities can create significant barriers that can (re)produce exclusion. Universities should therefore rethink the way they implement inclusion and instead refer to measurements of universal design.

Pascal Angerhausen is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the International Center for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel. Email: angerhausen@incher.uni-kassel.de

Shweta Mishra is the Managing Director of the German Institute for Interdisciplinary Social Policy Research. She is the Associate Editor of the Research into Higher Education Abstracts Journal. Her research focuses on social inequalities in higher education access and outcomes. She is an associate member of the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel.

References

Gattermann-Kasper M, Schütt M-L. (2022) Inklusive Hochschule. Konzeptionelle Grundlagen, aktueller Stand und Entwicklungen. In: Recht der Jugend und des Bildungswesens, 70, p. 92-106

Goldberg, C (2016). Is Intersectionality a Disabled Framework? Presenting PWIVID: In/Visibility and Variability as Intracategorical Interventions Critical Disability Discourses, 7: 55-88

Steinkühler J, Beuße M, Kroher M, Gerdes F, Schwabe U, Koopmann J, Becker K, Völk D, Schommer T, Buchholz S (2023) Die Studierendenbefragung in Deutschland: best3. Studieren mit einer gesundheitlichen Beeinträchtigung Hannover: DZHW


by Leave a comment

A Letter from Germany

By Richard Budd

In March 2019 I attended the GfHf (Gesellschaft für Hochschulforschung – German Society for HE Research) conference, in Magdeburg. I was supported by the SRHE as part of their ongoing and developing relationship between the two societies; the GfHf sent two ECRs to Newport for our 2018 conference. I was presenting a paper at the conference anyway, but was also looking to build networks and think about potential research collaboration.

As is often the case, the comparative aspects, both the similarities and dissimilarities, spring to mind when thinking about the conference. As we might expect, German-speaking HE researchers are, by and large, talking about the same things in and around universities that we are: populism and the legitimacy of experts and university-produced knowledge; governance in and around research and teaching; big data, digitalisation and social media; aspects of social justice around widening participation, gender pay inequalities, and employability. In this way, it was familiar territory. What stand out as different, though, are the geographical scale and unit of analysis.

In the first instance, the majority of papers were about German-speaking countries, and predominantly about German HE itself. This contrasts with the SRHE’s annual jamboree, which while being fairly UK-oriented, also sees and attracts a great deal of internationally comparative/non-UK research and researchers. Part of this is no doubt cultural, given the limited geographical spaces where German is the first language, and also because the countries in this space operate a specific kind of university system. Another part, though, can be attributed to funding, in that the German government, either centrally or at the regional state (Bundesland) level commissions a lot of research into examining the lay of the land and analysis of their policies.

Secondly, almost all of the papers relate to the macro and meso levels, or nation/system and organisational. As an admittedly crude generalisation, much of our UK-based research is macro-micro, connecting social and governance trends and/or analysis of individual/group experiences and responses. We do look at organisations, but for ethical/access reasons, universities’ identities tend to be anonymised, and this means that much of the case detail goes unreported. This is often not the case in Germany, they are much more matter-of-fact about what’s working, as well as where it’s going wrong. I’d argue that this is a good thing, being far healthier than sweeping problems under the carpet for reputational reasons, but then also German universities aren’t involved in the same kind of bun-fight for funding and students as we are.

This macro-meso orientation in German HE research probably connects to the fact that, as the majority of universities over there are state institutions, many changes to the system have to come from the top. Education in Germany falls within the remit of each of the 16 Bundesländer, and they are very protective of their regional turf. This means, though, that while universities and academics do have some autonomy, they are not as flexible (or as responsibilised) as in the UK. It also means that change is somewhat pedestrian by UK standards, but systemic. It has been well-documented that, for this reason, German speaking countries have been relatively slow to embrace (or have been immune from) the marketisation and performance-based elements that are so prevalent in many other countries.

A secondary observation is that nearly all of the papers are applying the same theoretical approach, neo-institutionalism. Neo-institutionalism is largely concerned with organisational behaviour, and sees organisations embedded within fields (i.e. sectors). It is therefore well-suited to what German HE researchers are looking at, but it was striking to see it appearing almost ubiquitously across the presentations I attended – including mine! We do see it in management/organisational studies in the UK, but not so much in HE research. Methodologically, the spectrum is as we see it, everything from multi-level modelling to discourse analysis and interviews etc. However, the qualitative work was invariably being utilised to examine the effect/effectiveness of interventions at the organisational level, rather than the personal experiential aspects.

What the conference really offers, then, is a different set of references and perspectives, as well as a different set of people, and therefore an opportunity to step out of our UK-oriented bubble. Many of us do research on an international and comparative basis, but we inescapably bring at least an element of ethno-centricity into our work. Being in Germany allowed me to step outside that a little more, and identified some of my own biases. Maybe, I’m wrong, and perhaps this says more about my methodological nationalism than anything.

As a caveat, most of the presentations – and both of the keynotes – are, naturally, in German. (It also reminded me that the non-native English speakers at our conferences have to work so much harder to follow presentations, ask/answer questions, and engage with colleagues; this is incredibly tiring.) As of 2018, though, there has been an English track in the conference – I presented my paper in this. German colleagues are almost invariably more than happy to converse in English for those who can only ask their way to station auf Deutsch. Culturally, the food is different, and there was an endless supply of (really good) cakes and coffee. Also, for those not familiar with German higher education, audience participants rap their knuckles on the desk at the end of presentations rather than clapping, which can be unsettling the first time you experience it!

In closing, it’s probably worth mentioning that nobody mentioned Brexit until the second round of drinks after dinner. There’s certainly absolutely no schadenfreude in Germany for the political corner we’ve painted ourselves into in that regard.

SRHE member Richard Budd is Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Lancaster.