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PARTISAN REVIEW
require lots of oral and/or written exams, papers, and practical exercises
while others do not. About ninety-five percent of our faculty have tenure
and are civil servants. German professors teach eight hours per week. The
rest of the time is devoted to research, exams, administration, and meet–
ings. Teaching and research are closely connected and cannot be separated.
Evaluation of both teaching and research is not yet firmly established,
although peer evaluation in research and through grant-giving agencies
does exist. Almost 80 percent of students finance their studies themselves.
There are neither student loan programs nor grants. Scholarships are rare.
To provide a more precise overview of German universi ties, I will use
Goethe University as an example.
It
is one of the ten largest universities in
Germany. The number of students in 1998 is around thirty-four thousand,
of whom 14 percent hold a foreign passport-representing ninety-two
dif–
ferent nationalities. This is one of the highest percentages of foreign
students in any German university. About 50 percent are women. However
only 23 percent of assistant teachers and only 11 percent of professors are
female. More than one hundred seventy different courses are taught in
twenty-one departments. Apart from engineering, Goethe University offers
almost everything under the academic sun including the education of
teachers for all school levels. Teaching and research, by over six hundred
professors, is supported by more than a thousand teaching and research
assistants, and by another thirteen hundred administrative staff-not
including the medical staff of the university clinic. Organization and decision–
making differ from one German state to another, because the German
educational system is characterized by a pronounced federalism.
In
a way
the university organization in the state of Hessen, and therefore in
Frankfurt, is a combination of parliamentary and bureaucratic elements. A
president, one or two vice presidents, and a chief administrator are the cen–
tral executors. However, executive functions are the responsibility of
twenty-one deans and the many directors of institutes. The parliamentary
structure includes five committees-research, budget, library, computer
services, and the senate--where all deans are members. Other German uni–
versities have similar frameworks, and are attempting to perform their
three-fold task: top-level research, providing higher education to ever
increasing masses of students, and training future research personnel. They
have to do so under restricted financial conditions. Goethe University, for
instance, has lost about 30 percent of its budget for education and research
within the last three years.
Now, I will return to our initial question, whether high standards and
mass education can be reconciled. German universities are undergoing a
profound crisis, which is above all a financial one. Since they are entirely
financed by the state, they have suffered from severe budget cuts. But this
