Sir

Your Editorial “Weak at the centre” and News story “Court ruling upsets hopes for career reforms” (Nature 430, 593 and 599; 200410.1038/430593b) describe the recent failure to replace the traditional career path at Germany's universities, the Habilitation, with a US-style junior-professor system.

It is true that most young German scientists are unhappy with the Supreme Court's decision to stop the reform by declaring it unconstitutional. It is also true that the federal system in Germany, which leaves university policy up to the states, threatens the international competitiveness of German universities. In practice, however, the differences between the existing Habilitation system and the junior professorship are marginal at best.

After completing a PhD and a postdoc, a Habilitand can join a research group at a German university. Many have no teaching duties and perform independent research, supervising undergraduate and graduate students, writing proposals for grants and publishing as much as they can. A few are well funded by the excellent Emmy Noether programme. Within six years, a Habilitand has to summarize his or her research achievements: this summary, which is very similar if not identical to most tenure files, is subject to external review. Following an internal university commission, the faculty either grants or rejects the Habilitation; this is similar in many ways to a tenure procedure.

The German academic anachronism is not the Habilitation procedure itself but what follows. Whereas successful US applicants receive tenured positions at their universities, the German Habilitand has to apply for positions elsewhere and sometimes has to wait for years before achieving a tenured associate professorship (C3 status) or a full professorship at another university. In Germany, as elsewhere, the best young scientists will have multiple offers, some before they even finish their Habilitation. But for many others — too many — a long, unproductive and insecure phase follows.

Here the junior professorship could indeed help. Unfortunately, it does not, because, as noted in your News story, the German-style junior professorship is not linked to tenure track, forcing junior professors into the same fate as their Habilitand colleagues. Both are waiting and competing for rare openings at other universities. In the end, the differences between the two systems are too small to make much impact on the careers of young German scientists.