Excellence Commission selects new Universities of Excellence

© DAAD

Ten Universities and one University consortium of Excellence were selected out of 19 applications for long-term funding as part of the German Excellence Strategy.

Those are:

  • RWTH Aachen University
  • Berlin University Alliance
  • University of Bonn
  • Technische Universität Dresden
  • Universität Hamburg
  • Heidelberg University
  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
  • University of Konstanz
  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
  • Technical University of Munich
  • University of Tübingen

The Federal Minister for Education and Research, Anja Karliczek, and Professor Dr. Eva Quante-Brandt, the Senator for Science, Health and Consumer Protection of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, announced that the selected universities and university consortia will together receive total annual funding in the amount of 148 Mio. Euro from November 1, 2019 onwards.

Eligible for competing for the title as Universities of Excellence were universities that in September 2018 secured at least two Clusters of Excellence (or at least three Clusters of Excellence in the case of university consortia) in the German Research Foundation (DFG)-administered funding line “Clusters of Excellence”. 17 universities and two university consortia from eight federal states (Länder) managed to meet this formal prerequisite for submitting an application in the funding line “Universities of Excellence”.

The funding provided through the funding line “Universities of Excellence” is, in principle, permanent. However, the administrative agreement underpinning the Excellence Strategy contains two additional provisions. First, the selected universities need to again secure the required minimum number of Clusters of Excellence in the next call (in seven years) in order to continue to meet the formal funding prerequisites. Second, the selected universities of excellence will be regularly evaluated every seven years and continuously funded if the evaluation result is positive. Moreover, when successful in the highly competitive and academically-driven procedure, four additional universities or university consortia could be funded from 2026 onwards in the second call for universities of excellence. In the funding line “Clusters of Excellence”, the 57 Clusters of Excellence (located at 34 universities) that were selected in September 2018 are already receiving funding since January 1, 2019.

Link to the full article: DFG Press Release No. 34 | July 19, 2019