Sir

The planned new university law in Germany (Hochschulrahmengesetz) is intended to make universities more competitive by abolishing the Habilitation requirement, and by creating new positions (Juniorprofessoren) to allow people to carry out independent research before attaining a tenured position (see News Feature, pages 768–770).

We fully support these aims, and firmly believe that the establishment of many more groups of independent young investigators is essential to making the German research system more flexible, attractive and productive. These groups could be modelled on the US system's assistant-professor grade, or on the independent research groups which are already established at several German universities and Max Planck institutes.

But the new law contains strict time constraints that severely undermine the competitiveness of German research, at least in the area of life sciences. We strongly believe this law must be changed before it goes through parliament.

The intention is that there will be no more than six years between the diploma (the examination required before beginning a PhD project) and the start of a junior professorship, which itself is limited to a maximum of six years. In a manner that may seem typically German, both time limits will be strictly enforced. After a transitional period, the completion of a period as Juniorprofessor will become the prerequisite for securing a regular, tenured position.

As a consequence, all PhD and postdoctoral work will have to be completed within only six years, which is much too short for many biomedical and other natural-science projects. It will become unrealistic to complete an innovative PhD project and then move to a new lab for postdoctoral research. Up to now, almost all postdocs working both in Germany and abroad have taken more than six years to complete their work. Yet under the new law, any scientist exceeding the six-year limit will be excluded from a post as Juniorprofessor. Far from luring German postdocs working in foreign countries back home, the new law will actually exacerbate the brain drain.

The time limit will effectively abolish the current postdoctoral system in Germany. The prerequisite for a post as Juniorprofessor will be an excellent PhD thesis, with no requirement for additional scientific work.

This regulation will increase the dependence of PhD students on their advisers, a dependency that may be even worse than that experienced by more senior scientists doing their Habilitation (which the new law is intended to mitigate) and will render everyone's subsequent academic career contingent on the initial stage of their scientific activity. Almost all Juniorprofessoren will lack the invaluable experience of having done research in more than one lab (within Germany or abroad) before starting their own group, and will be less inclined to change research topics.

In sum, the strict adherence to this six-year rule will not only deprive German research labs of postdocs and exacerbate the brain drain, but will result in poorly qualified academics, lacking the valuable experience of having worked in different laboratories or on different subjects. Moreover, the emphasis on time, rather than quality, will encourage research projects that are safe and dull, rather than innovative yet risky.

More than 1,000 scientists (Professoren, group leaders, postdocs and students) support the views expressed here; their names and addresses are listed at http://www.zmnh.uni-hamburg.de/jentsch/unterschriften.