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When the University of Bonn learned that the latest round of the German government¡¯s Excellence Strategy would fund eight of its research clusters, rector Michael Hoch quite literally jumped for joy ¨C a celebration the university¡¯s social media team subsequently . The success was a ¡°historic milestone¡±, Hoch went on to declare.

As the rector¡¯s reaction might suggest, securing funding through the Excellence Strategy, or its predecessor the Excellence Initiative, is a pretty big deal. Over the past 20 years, the schemes have dished out billions of euros in funding to German universities in the hopes of boosting top-quality research and raising their international profiles. Asked how the initiatives have impacted the University of Bonn, for instance, Hoch listed ¡°tremendous progress¡± in international rankings, ¡°new records in [attracting] third-party funding¡±, ¡°more than double the number of ERC [European Research Council] grants¡± and two new winners of the Leibniz Prize ¨C up to 10 of which are awarded per year to Germany-based researchers by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

But the excellence schemes have been controversial from the start. Some critics fear the creation of an elitist, two-tier university system. Others have criticised the labour-intensive application process, warned against heightened inter-institutional competition and called for a long-term funding approach, rather than fixed-term boosts that may not be renewed. Two decades in, and with institutional applications due this week for the next iteration of the scheme, the debate is still going on.

The first Exzellenzinitiative, agreed upon by the German federal and state governments in 2005, aimed to ¡°promote top-level research and¡­improve the quality of German universities and research institutions¡±, according to the DFG. Much like France¡¯s ¡°Initiative d¡¯Excellence¡± (IdEX), launched five years later, the scheme was motivated in part by the relative invisibility of German universities in global rankings ¨C a reflection of the fact that a lot of the countries¡¯ best research is done outside the university system in research institutes ¨C such as, in Germany¡¯s case, those run by the Max Planck Society and the Leibniz and Helmholtz associations.

¡°When I was at Cambridge in 1986, people asked me, ¡®What are the equivalents to Cambridge and Oxford in Germany?¡¯¡± Karla Pollmann, president of the University of T¨¹bingen, told 51³Ô¹Ï. But Germany¡¯s federal structure, with higher education policy largely the responsibility of the 16 individual states, ¡°doesn¡¯t lend itself easily to that kind of profiling exercise¡±, Pollmann said. ¡°We have a lot of states, and most of them have good universities.¡±

Under the then minister of education and research Edelgard Bulmahn, the Excellence Initiative was therefore designed to differentiate the university system, distinguishing a handful of ¡°German Harvards¡± from the pack. And, to Hoch, there is ¡°no doubt¡± that the ¡°political goal behind [the initiative] was both necessary and timely in the context of global competition¡±.

Run by the DFG and the German Council of Science and Humanities (WR), the Excellence Initiative distributed €4.6 billion (?4 billion) in additional funding over two rounds, between 2006 and 2017. Money was allocated across three lines of funding: ¡°graduate schools to promote early career researchers¡±, ¡°clusters of excellence to promote top-level research¡± and ¡°institutional strategies to promote top-level research¡±.

Lukas Mergele, a policy consultant at the Swiss firm BSS and a former research economist who studied the Excellence Initiative, said the scheme ¡°put a lot of pressure on to universities to shine¡±. Creating a German Harvard this way, however, was ¡°completely unfeasible¡± since ¡°the funds were spread so thinly across a very large number of institutions¡±.

Nevertheless, an international expert panel that was asked to review the scheme near its end gave a ¡°very positive¡± verdict in a , stating that it had ¡°made the German university system more dynamic and has become a tangible symbol for the will to improve the international competitiveness of German universities¡±.

A successor to the initiative, the panel recommended, ¡°must focus even more consistently on its central objective: namely, strengthening top-level research in Germany and improving the international competitiveness of universities as central pillars of the research system¡±. Accordingly, the Excellence Strategy, or ExStra, offered only two lines of funding: Clusters of Excellence, focused on ¡°internationally competitive research fields¡± at either universities or consortia, and Universities of Excellence, intended to ¡°strengthen either a university as a single institution or a consortium of universities¡±.

The first phase, which began in 2019 and is now in its final year, has distributed a total of €385 million a year to 57 of these Clusters of Excellence. The , beginning next year and running until 2032, will see a significant expansion: a yearly total of €539 million shared between 70 clusters.

In addition, up?to four more universities may join the that have already won the ¡°excellence¡± title so far (subject to renewal ahead of the next phase), sharing additional funding of €148 million a year. Germany¡¯s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, may have vied for leadership of the Christian Democrats with Angela Merkel, but he evidently agrees with her on the importance of the excellence programme ¨C launched in the first year of her long chancellorship and continued by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz.

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Two decades of excellence programmes has certainly had a big impact on the Technical University of Munich (TUM). In 2016, the institution was Germany¡¯s fourth-highest ranked?in the 51³Ô¹Ï World University Rankings, at 53rd?overall. By 2023 it had overtaken LMU Munich ¨C another designated university of excellence ¨C to become Germany¡¯s top-ranked university, ranked 26th?by 2025.

Thomas Hofmann, president of TUM, said his institution had ¡°used the excellence competitions to initiate deep structural reforms¡±, such as creating a graduate school, an Institute for Advanced Study and an Institute for Lifelong Learning. ¡°The impact has been profound,¡± he said.

But the benefits of the excellence schemes for some other German universities ¨C at least in rankings terms ¨C are not so obvious. The first round of the Excellence Initiative was a ¡°hard awakening¡± for T¨¹bingen, according to Pollmann. The then leadership of the ¡°very old, high-quality¡± university, ¡°were so convinced that they would just sail through¡±. But T¨¹bingen was not awarded excellence status in 2006, ¡°and that, of course, was considered to be a disaster¡±.

That disaster prompted ¡°radical rethinking, radical reform and radical restructuring¡±, all of which paid off when T¨¹bingen became a University of Excellence in 2012, and again in 2019. However, that status has not propelled T¨¹bingen up the university rankings. In 2016, it was ranked 78th?in the?THE?World University Rankings. Nine years later it was joint 100th.

Nor is its trajectory unusual. The number of German universities in the top 200 of the?World University Rankings?has gradually declined over the past few years ¨C from 23 in 2020 to 20 in 2025 ¨C and the German institutions that remain within the top 200 have also dropped. However, Germany remains the second most highly represented European nation in the top 200. And the top country, the UK, has also seen a decline even as overall scores rise, reflecting the rise, in particular, of China?¨C which now has?13 universities in the top 200, compared with?seven in 2020.

What of the excellence programmes¡¯ wider effects?

One of the 11 currently designated universities of excellence is a consortium ¨C the Berlin University Alliance, comprising three universities and one university hospital. However, the Excellence Initiative and Strategy haven¡¯t triggered the wave of mega-institutional mergers that have caused such angst in France, where time-honoured institutions have struggled to subsume their individual identities into new merged and semi-merged entities. However, many of Germany¡¯s clusters of excellence bring together multiple universities alongside non-university research institutions. For instance, TUM¡¯s excellence clusters, Hofmann said, ¡°unite the strengths of TUM with those of the Max Planck Society, Helmholtz Centres, Fraunhofer Institutes and others¡±.

Pollmann said it was a similar story at T¨¹bingen. This is because the clusters ¡°cooperate on large interdisciplinary topics¡±, she explained. ¡°That [collaboration] has done the universities good because they are then able to do world-class research.¡±

Jamil Salmi, a global higher education consultant and former tertiary education coordinator at the World Bank, described this greater focus on interdisciplinarity as a ¡°very positive development¡± arising from the excellence initiatives: ¡°They¡¯ve really encouraged institutions to put away the silos.¡±

Pollmann also applauds the possibility of doing ¡°high-risk, high-gain research¡± that has been opened up by the ¡°considerable additional money¡± that comes with the excellence label ¨C not merely from the scheme itself but also from ¡°other funding bodies, private foundations, charitable institutions and also the state itself, [which] all of a sudden looked at us and said, ¡®What can we do to invest more?¡¯¡±

But this crowding in of funding appears not to have been a universal experience. After studying data from universities involved in the Excellence Initiative, Mergele, the consultant, observed that the funding received ¡°did not appear to complement other funding sources, possibly because professors lacked capacity to simultaneously prepare time-intensive applications for additional third-party funding or faced diminishing returns from additional funding¡±.

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Some critics object to the institutional competitiveness the excellence programmes have introduced. For instance, Amrei Bahr, junior professor of philosophy of technology and information at the University of Stuttgart, said the Excellence Strategy encouraged ¡°hypercompetition for funding¡± over ¡°cooperation and solidarity¡± among the academic community ¨C a particular concern in a political climate seen as increasingly hostile to universities: ¡°When everyone is competing against each other, it weakens academia as a whole,¡± she said. ¡°It is then less able to defend itself against external attacks, planned budget cuts and similar threats.¡±

Bahr also worries about excellence programmes¡¯ effect on research careers. The Excellence Strategy has yet to undergo independent evaluation ¨C something that Bahr says should be ¡°addressed with urgency¡± in the ¡°interest of evidence-based science policy¡±. But, either way, the junior professor ¨C one of the originators of the #IchBinHanna campaign against precarious research careers ¨C fears that an emphasis on temporary competitive funding over long-term support reinforces precarity.

In addition, she is worried that the scheme¡¯s ¡°fixation on superlatives¡± means that ¡°much of what is important in research, such as unspectacular, diligent work as a prerequisite for groundbreaking discoveries, remains invisible, even though it is indispensable¡±.

In that sense, she believes, there is no such thing as the ideal excellence project. Better, she believes, for German academia to be ¡°adequately funded across the board¡±, in order to prevent it from ¡°becoming a mixture of partially privileged flagship institutions and institutions that struggle to maintain their basic functioning¡±.

But others would like to see competition intensify. TUM¡¯s Hofmann suggested that existing universities of excellence could vie for ¡°substantial extra funding as ¡®federal universities of excellence¡¯¡±, a move that ¡°would help to push three or four universities into the international top group of research-driven universities¡±.

Bonn¡¯s Hoch, meanwhile, said teaching and talent development must not be overlooked, while the government must not rely solely on the Excellence Strategy to strengthen German universities. ¡°One critical issue in this context is the student-to-staff ratio, which cannot be addressed through excellence funding,¡± he said, noting that an improvement of the ratio would require amendments to legal regulations.?

For her part, T¨¹bingen¡¯s Pollmann said one key improvement could be for the Excellence Strategy to become ¡°more European ¨C so you could forge partnerships with universities not only across Germany, but also with other European countries¡±.

She also?notes that the relatively short-term funding boosts offered by excellence schemes ¡°are a little bit at odds with the relatively stable understanding of a university as something which is doing regular work¡±. Universities receiving excellence funding, therefore, must ensure that ¡°the institutional tasks of a university are not subordinate to the Excellence Strategy, but that the Excellence Strategy is an engine that helps to develop the university forward¡±.

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Acquiring that engine, though, does risk consuming an institution, as the application process is long and laborious. And even when universities are successful, ¡°the question arises as to whether the effort is proportionate to the return¡±, Bahr thinks.

But Salmi said even unsuccessful applicants to excellence schemes could reap some benefit. ¡°I¡¯ve seen in Germany, France and other countries that¡­some universities have still managed to transform themselves and improve their performance,¡± he said. ¡°Universities are trying to think strategically about what they are doing and what they could improve.¡±

Still, for failed applicants that were successful in previous rounds, the pill can be a bitter one to swallow. Becoming a university of excellence or hosting a cluster of excellence ¡°is a door-opener for the future, not only for the additional funding but also the reputational effects¡±, said Erik Lehmann, chair of management and organisation at the University of Augsburg. But ¡°losing excellence status is like losing a Michelin star. There¡¯s a loss of reputation [as well as a] loss of financial resources.¡±

University of Konstanz professor Marius Busemeyer witnessed that loss first-hand this year, when funding for the cluster of excellence at his institution¡¯s Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour was not renewed. ¡°There is the lost funding, which is a significant part of our budget,¡± said Busemeyer, who is the spokesperson for Konstanz¡¯s other excellence cluster, The Politics of Inequality. ¡°But maybe even more importantly, it does something to the self-image of the university and its confidence.¡±

To be eligible for University of Excellence status, institutions must host at least two excellence clusters ¨C which means that after two decades of holding it, Konstanz will lose the title when the current funding period ends. This requirement, Busemeyer told THE, means that ¡°small universities are disadvantaged in this competition¡±.

In that sense, concerns about the strategy¡¯s elitism are ¡°valid¡±, Busemeyer believes. ¡°With regard to the excellence clusters, the funding is more distributed across different universities and locations, but with regard to excellence universities, one can observe a growing tendency for the strategy to privilege research-intensive, large universities¡± ¨C universities ¡°that had already been strong¡± before the strategy was launched.

Either way, Pollmann is determined that T¨¹bingen will not fall out of the Excellence Strategy. Currently designated Universities of Excellence must submit a self-evaluation report by 1 August and, for Pollmann, this has meant working days ¡°sometimes 16 to 18 hours long¡± even as the campus emptied and the beaches beckoned.

Once everything¡¯s submitted, T¨¹bingen must then undergo a thorough two-day assessment, before enduring a nervous wait until March, when an expert committee will make the call: is the university still officially excellent, or should its academic Michelin star be revoked?

¡°Please,¡± Pollmann said, ¡°keep your fingers crossed.¡±