Sir

Your editorial and News report touch on fundamental problems that have beset German universities for a long time (Nature 396, 393; 1998 & Nature 396, 396; 1998 ). The system is rigid and bureaucratic with little incentive for efforts beyond minimal requirements.

Many professors strive to achieve high standards against a gradient of adverse conditions dictated by federal and state university laws, compounded by legal systems that rule on salaries for technical and academic staff. The result is a stable system, but one that favours the mediocre. Salaries depend solely on age, family status, and years in the job.

After five years at the university, everyone attains the right to permanent, tenured employment almost regardless of quality. As such positions are usually already filled and are no longer created, a well trained technician or academic staff member has to leave even if funds for their salary are available from research grants and they do not necessarily seek permanent employment.

Compared to the United States, tenure is reached early and in high numbers. This creates complacency. Furthermore, no university in Germany (except a few private institutions) can select their students. They have no influence on selection criteria or numbers admitted, and no student pays a single Pfennig for tuition. No wonder that calls for payment by results are opposed.

But at least some faculties have begun to reallocate their scarce resources on the basis of objective criteria that allow the assessment of research results.