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The German University Rectors' Conference (HRK) is proposing to create short-term ‘qualification professorships’, in an attempt to lower the age at which researchers can become tenured professors, and to offer an alternative to the much criticized Habilitation system.

Possible changes in the federal law are to be discussed by a committee of academic experts set up by research minister Edelgard Bulmahn. The committee will also suggest how academic employment rules could be relaxed, for example, to give universities more freedom to pay professors on performance.

Although Habilitation — or ‘equivalent experience’ — is required by law for a professorship, many academics consider it an archaic anomaly. US-style assistant professorships do not exist in Germany. Habilitation chains young PhDs to established professors, whom they must serve as ‘scientific assistants’ to get teaching and research experience. A Habilitand must also submit a thesis, known as an opus magnum.

The procedure, which exists only in German-speaking countries, is criticized for not giving young scientists independent research experience, and for taking too long: the average age at qualification is 40.

Equivalent experience — such as research, publications and teaching — is now recognized by many science departments, but is difficult to obtain in Germany, where few positions are available for independent research.

Qualification professorships would offer an alternative career path more in tune with international norms, says the report of the HRK's research committee, approved last week by the HRK's plenary council. Young scientists should become eligible to take up a university chair not later than ten years after graduating, it says.

The report says that the positions should be advertised openly, to attract those doing PhDs or postdocs abroad. Scientific assistantships leading to Habilitation are too often appointed in-house, contributing to a lack of transparency in promotions and a lack of mobility within the scientific community, says the report.

The qualification professorships should be given to those completing their PhDs at a different university. They should be four-year appointments, with the possibility of a two-year extension.

Klaus Landfried, president of the HRK, says that the positions would be similar to US assistant professorships, and universities should consider them as part of a tenure-track system. “Position holders would be responsible for their own teaching and research programmes, and applying for their own research grants,” he says.

The idea builds on the new Emmy Noether programme of the research council, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which supports young scientists for two years of research abroad and a further three years in Germany. These awards are only available to scientists under 30 years of age (see Nature 399, 186; 1999). The HRK and the DFG are “of the same mind” on the need for a career structure for young scientists, says Landfried.

Most scientists have welcomed the proposal, but a few have reservations. Michael Schreiber, professor of theoretical physics at Chemnitz University and a member of the Hochschulverband, the university professors' association, says that Habilitation should be maintained in parallel to the proposed new system because it is the best proof of competence for a professorship.

He also points out that scientists can gain their Habilitation in their mid-thirties, “if they are clever enough to select a research department where Habilitation goes through quickly,” such as his own. The HRK's report says that Habilitation should remain an option for those departments with faith in it. But most believe that, given alternative ways of proving competence, Habilitation will slowly fade away.

Bulmahn's committee will present its report on the general relaxation of various legal restrictions on academic employment in April next year. One member, Hans Meyer, a lawyer who is president of Humboldt University, Berlin, says that there is little resistance to the idea of ‘qualification professorships’, but more resistance to other ideas, particularly performance-related pay for professors.

The Hochschulverband, for example, fears that decoupling academic appointments from their Beamter (civil servant) status, which would allow universities to vary the pay of professors, would deprive them of the academic freedom that the status guarantees.

Despite this, Meyer predicts that reforms allowing qualification professorships and performance-related pay will be in place by 2002 or 2003, the end of the coalition government's term. Most parliamentarians and state governments are in favour.

But Wolfgang Herrmann, president of the Technical University of Munich, says that universities should not delay action to help young scientists begin independent careers. His university is preparing to convert scientific assistant posts to independent assistant professorships, following amendments to the Bavarian state law on universities this year that give universities more control over their spending. But only a change in the federal framework law on universities would allow these assistant professors to teach their own courses, rather than the courses of an established professor.