C
Establishing tenure track professorships
C1 Introduction, approach und science policy discourse
The tenure track professorship (TTP) is a new career path in Germany that leads to a tenured professorship, thereby complementing previous career paths. The programme was introduced with the goals of enabling academics and researchers to achieve independence at an early stage, lowering the age of first-time appointments, facilitating planning for careers in academia and increasing the attractiveness of the German career system on the international stage.
Funded by the federal government and federal states, the Tenure Track Programme created an additional 1,000 tenure track professorships by 2022. The programme has been a thematic point of reference for the scientific policy debate on TTP since the associated administrative agreement was announced in 2016. In principle, the programme and career path are welcomed by a large number of science policymakers, although individual conditions, the effects of funding and specific aspects of the career path have been criticised.
The substantial TTP funding by the federal and state governments has led to initial progress towards cultural change. More and more programmes for early career researchers are being set up to make academic career paths more transparent and easier to plan. A total of 14 funding measures and programmes have been launched across nine federal states to support the TTP. Funding is provided for personnel and materials, individual posts, scholarships, mentoring and networking opportunities. Special emphasis is placed on advancing female academics and researchers (nine programmes are dedicated to supporting women).
C2 The Tenure Track Professorship in the career system towards a professorship
The structural and cultural change is also reflected in the statistics: Since 2018, the number of TTP has more than doubled, increasing by 101% from 665 in 2018 to 1,336 in 2022. Significant rises can be observed in engineering (up by 198%) and in mathematics, natural sciences and computer science (up by 113%). The rise of junior professorships with tenure track (TT) and W2 professorships with tenure track have clearly increased since 2018; however, they seem to have replaced not only the traditional habilitation path to professorship but also, to a large extent, qualification paths via junior research group leaders and junior professorships without tenure track (Fig. 14).
The number of women in TTP has snowballed from 238 in 2018 to 583 in 2022, marking an increase of approximately 145%. This upswing is thus significantly higher than the overall rise in TTP (101%). Moreover, the share of women in TTP reached 44% in 2022, showing the largest increase of all career paths, with an 8 percentage point gain.
While the number of professorships with TT has more than doubled since 2018, the numbers of junior professorships (JP) without TT and junior research group leaders (JRGL) have dropped by about a quarter over the same period (24% and 28% respectively). A slight rise can be observed in the number of ongoing habilitations (up by 8%, with a minor drop between 2020 and 2022), while the number of completed habilitations has stagnated since 2018. The TTP has thus seen strong growth in this period, also in relation to other qualification and career paths that lead to a professorship (Fig. 14).
Career paths to professorships at universities and equivalent institutions from 2018 to 2022, by type of career path (in %)
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tenure track professorhips (W1 and W2) | 100 | 111 | 141 | 168 | 201 |
| Non-tenure track, junior professorships (W1) | 100 | 92 | 86 | 82 | 76 |
| Junior research group leaders | 100 | 88 | 75 | 68 | 73 |
| Habilitations | 100 | 99 | 100 | 106 | 100 |
| Ongoing habilitations | 100 | 105 | 110 | 109 | 108 |
Source: Special evaluation of the Federal Statistical Office, calculation for the accompanying study “Establishing the tenure-track professorship career path in the German science system”; own representation
C3 Development of the regulatory framework
The framework conditions for implementing TTP at universities are in place in all federal states. However, the legislation differs between states with regard to the regulatory provisions and level of detail in implementation.
The broader the framework set by state legislation and the less detailed the requirements in the respective State Higher Education Act, the more the responsibility for defining and implementing the framework conditions shifts to universities and their statutory regulations. This is particularly true with regard to the development of the “quality-assured evaluation”.
A comparison of federal state legislation before and after the resolution of the federal-state agreement on the Tenure Track Programme (2016) reveals a significant increase in the number of states that have regulated the TT in their State Higher Education Act.
C4 Establishing tenure track professorships at universities
The introduction of the TTP has changed the organisational structures and processes at universities. This is particularly evident when analysing the legal regulations, such as statutes and ordinances, adopted at universities for the TT. The main focus of the statutes is on the regulations for the tenure evaluation process, agreement on the evaluation criteria and the transition to a tenured professorship in case of successful evaluation.
The tenure evaluation process offers several options that take the specific needs and circumstances of each individual university into account. This also applies to selecting and configuring quality assurance measures for the process.
An interim evaluation may be useful and provide guidance on subsequent career steps in the case of professorships for which federal state legislation allows a continuous TT phase of five or six years without a mandatory interim review process.
C5 The tenure track professorship by international comparison
Due to their complexity, heterogeneity and country- specific characteristics, the university systems reviewed here (Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands) are not directly comparable with the TTP. Nevertheless, it is possible to compare individual features without declaring a particular system more or less attractive.
Universities in the three reference countries enjoy a much higher degree of personnel and financial autonomy than those in Germany. At the same time, there is significantly less regulation in all three reference countries than in the German higher education system with regard to TTP. As a result, universities in these countries are more empowered than in Germany. On the one hand, this enables universities to organise and allocate their portfolio of staff categories according to their respective needs. But on the other hand, the respective system is less transparent than the German system due to the high number of individual regulations.
Germany is the only country in the group under review in which an incumbent is appointed professor and granted civil servant status at the same time. The granting of tenure thus has special implications. For example, in addition to the purely subject-related assessment, the incumbent must meet the general requirements of public sector employment. Furthermore, civil servant status offers attractive benefits that may well have a positive impact on career path applications both at home and abroad.