University reforms: German universities are preparing for shrinkage

The Goethe University Frankfurt, like all Hessian universities, has to save. The Higher Education Pact adopted in 2025 requires a consolidation contribution of 30 percent for the current year. After that, the budget is expected to rise again, but by 2031, a financing gap of one billion euros is expected, meaning: The rising personnel and operating costs are not covered by the state. The financial situation, it is assumed, will continue to deteriorate in the foreseeable future in the face of a weak economy, high debt and global political turbulence. The Frankfurt University Board now wants to equip itself with a comprehensive reform permanently for a future with scarcer resources. The reform process, which will be discussed in the Senate on Wednesday, is to be prepared in the current semester and completed by 2032. The aim is to streamline the overall structure by raising synergies and dismantling dual structures. The Humanities as a problem child Central Reform lever is the merger of the 16 faculties to date to seven. Business and law, for example, will be reconnected. Five humanities disciplines become two. The reform is accompanied by hard austerity measures. Personnel are to be reduced by 15 percent in each of the departments, and by 20 percent in administration. In concrete terms, this means the removal of 60 professorships, with the humanities being significantly more affected than the natural and life sciences. Only the medicine, which is preserved as a specialist area, no savings requirements are made. The humanities appear in the reform paper once again as children of concern, the natural and life sciences as the pillars of the university. The Bureau will have to explain how it reconciles the extensive deletions with the stated aim of preserving the small compartments. Whether the reform is an attempt to strengthen the profitable subjects at the expense of the less profitable ones is not clear from the reform concept. There are some indications of this. Preparation for the reform through an inventory of third-party funding and research strength could result in penalising the humanities, as well as the announced indicator-based budgeting model. Whether the profound changes actually result in savings potential in the end remains to be seen. An alternative concept, which is also discussed in the Senate, raises doubts. It makes structural changes dependent on the proof of usefulness. Excellency behind crumbling facades Apart from that, the Bureau draft is an ambitious reform which, if successful, could be a model for other universities under austerity pressure. Compared with the other Hessian universities, however, the Frankfurt Reformweg is isolated. The University of Giessen does not give up any subject areas for its savings course. TU Darmstadt has closed the sports institute and is preparing for future impositions with continuous small steps. Another neck strike has just been accepted. The Hessian Ministry of Science has cut the building funds for the next few years, in fact, by 15 million euros annually. In the words of its Chancellor, the cut hits the university at least as hard as the university pact adopted last year. The judgment of the legal scholar Christoph Möllers that the universities in Germany would be dramatically reduced is clearly true of Hessen. Similar situation in Berlin and on Berlin. The universities there have to save by the revised university contract to a similar extent as in Hessen. In 2025, they had to make do with 142 million euros less, since 2026 the allocations increase again, but lag behind the old university contract. The three major universities have responded to the austerity plan by reducing staff and reducing material resources. It has been prepared that short-term measures will not be enough and it has begun to adapt the structures permanently to a lower budget. This is easier said than done, especially in the case of the Technical University. TU Berlin had to reduce its administration by 100 jobs, 18 areas of expertise were saved, and material resources were cut. In 2026, the savings amount to 49.5 million euros, by 2028 it will increase to 65 million euros per year. The financial scope for the university, which had to close its main building due to fire protection in May and pushes a renovation backlog of an estimated 2.4 billion before itself, remains in order to implement its strategic plans, is easy to measure. University President Fatma Deniz, who took office in April, is faced with the decision to either let the buildings continue to crumble or save money elsewhere. The other two major Berlin universities are also forced to make hard cuts. The association of excellence that they form together offers no compensation for this. The money is earmarked. It is a strange irony that the new members of Excellence Darmstadt and Frankfurt, as well as the Berlin Excellence Alliance, are in university policy problem areas. Other federal states treat their universities more carefully, such as Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg or Saxony. But there, too, you will have to be prepared for tighter budgets. The overloading of universities with more and more tasks, the increasing personnel and operating costs and decades postponed construction and renovation measures put all German universities under financial pressure. The renovation backlog is estimated at 60 to 140 billion euros. In February, the federal government and the federal states launched a program that will provide one billion euros for the..