德国高校科研活动对第三方资助的依赖 及改革的迫切性

On the Dependency of Research on Third-party Funding at German Universities and the Urgent Need for a Fundamental Reform

德国高校的科研经费很大程度上都来自于第三方资助。第三方资助通常需要通过竞争才能获得,例如联邦政府和各州的“卓越战略”,目的是激励高校提高工作灵活性和创新精神,并推动德国作为科研基地产出成果,使其具有国际竞争力。然而,长期以来,人们对德国高等教育系统整体上明显的不良发展一直避而不谈。这种不良发展随着对第三方资助的日益依赖而产生,特别是综合性大学深受影响。文章综述了德国高校科研活动资金来源的基本情况,阐述了高校对第三方资助日益增长的依赖性,揭示了伴随而来的不良发展,并论述了急需贯彻的改革对策。

Research at German universities is financed to a considerable extent by third-party funds.These third-party funds are usually awarded competitively,such as the Excellence Strategy of the Ger-man federal and state governments,are intended to provide incentives for more agility and innovative spirit at universities,to strengthen the performance of Germany as a research location and make aca-demic research in Germany internationally competitive.However,the serious disadvantages for the German higher education system as a whole resulting from this increasing dependency on third-party funds,above all with regards to German universities,were too long neglected.This article introduces the basics of research funding at German universities,examines the growing dependency on third-par-ty funding,traces the associated undesirable developments and outlines urgently needed reform per-spectives.