Imagine university campuses with empty classrooms and a
deserted cafeteria. And not just during the semester break, but
throughout the whole year. Germany may not be facing this problem
at the moment--universities are currently operating at 117% of
their capacities--but the situation will change markedly in the
coming years. According to several recent studies, Germany will
face a dramatic shortfall of about 250,000 university graduates by
the year 2010. This development is worsened by the constant
decrease in the country's birthrate, which has already affected
disciplines such as the sciences and engineering.
The problem unfolds on two different levels. First, not enough
graduates from Germany's higher gymnasium schools pursue university
educations. The number of gymnasium graduates who want to go to
university has decreased from 82% in 1990 to 68% in 1999. That is
not enough to cover the needs of Germany's industries. Out of 100
Germans, only 16 will graduate from a university, compared to an
average of 27 in other industrialized countries, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development study finds.
An important reason for this is the current setup of most
university programs: Although German students experience great
latitude during their university educations, they study much longer
than do their competitors in other countries. This fact obviously
leads to frustration among students: The current dropout rate is
remarkably high--31% at universities and 21% at applied science
universities (Fachhochschulen). Federal and state governments try
to counter this problem by encouraging universities to introduce
B.A. and B.S. programs that offer first degrees after only six
semesters.
Second, residence and working permit regulations for foreign
academics are still very restrictive. The current system limits the
influx of urgently needed experts from abroad, and immigration laws
allow foreigners to study at universities but not to look for jobs
afterward. As soon as these people graduate, their residence
permits expire and they are forced to leave the country. This is an
obvious reason why the federal minister for education and research,
Edelgard Bulmahn, repeatedly states her strong interest in the
liberalization of both residence and work-permit laws. "It is hard
to believe that we give young people from other countries an
opportunity to achieve a high qualification and other countries
make a profit from that," says Bulmahn.
If these highly qualified students were allowed to stay, German
high-tech and other industries would welcome them. "With each
hiring of a foreign [university graduate] in Germany, four to five
other new jobs are created," explains Bulmahn. More than half of
Germany's businesses would like to hire foreign staff, because they
either have special knowledge about other countries or have better
qualifications than German graduates have. Although the so-called
"green card" has already been introduced for the information
technology industry, other industrial sectors would like to expand
this type of working permit throughout the whole job market.
Although recent figures from Germany's Academic Exchange
Service, Deutscher Akademischer
Austauschdienst , sound encouraging, much remains to be done.
Over the last 25 years, the number of foreign students at German
universities has quadrupled. About 11,000 of the 166,000 non-German
students enrolled in Germany graduated last year. That is good, but
it is still not enough. "We have to open up more for an
internationalization of science, research, and the economy in
Germany," says Wolfang Frühwald, president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . The
Humboldt Foundation, Germany's largest agency that provides
financial support for foreign students, funded German-based
fellowships for more than 2000 scientists from other countries in
the past year alone. With recent government cash injections of DM
90 million (US$40 million), the foundation just started a new
program that allows foreign scientists to establish research groups
in Germany until 2003. Frühwald hopes that this program will
attract more scientists to Germany. To make them stay and thus to
solve the shortage problem, Germany urgently needs to change 'its
immigration laws and develop a residential status for young foreign
graduates.