Financing Higher Education Financial Planning: State Universities Fear Tough Cuts
11 November 2024
University leaderships sound the alarm and show solidarity with student protests
Higher education financial planning by the state for 2026 to 2030 could force the Baden-Württemberg universities to make tough cuts – with negative impacts on the training of skilled workers, innovation capacity, prosperity and the state’s fitness for the future. Consequently, the rectors of the universities of Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Konstanz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Tübingen, Ulm and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology are sounding the alarm and expressing solidarity with the student protests that will take place on 13 November at various university locations and on 15 November 2024 in Stuttgart.
The state of Baden-Württemberg is currently debating its budget and also the outline of the future financing of higher education. According to Prof. Dr Michael Weber, chair of the University Rectorate Conference of Baden-Württemberg (LRK BW), all the information about the financing plans indicates that the state’s universities have to expect a considerable de facto decline in funding. This will not be manageable without painful cuts. With the 2026-2030 Higher Education Financing Agreement III the universities will be significantly worse off than with the present one, a situation which the university leaderships could only balance out by making cuts, says LRK BW deputy chair Prof. Dr Karla Pollmann.
Yet now is the right time to invest in education and research, according to the LRK BW. “Universities are one of the chief driving forces to make the state of Baden-Württemberg fit for the future,” underlines Prof. Weber. The University Rectorate Conference therefore calls on the entire state government to use the central role of its universities to keep up Baden-Württemberg’s academic competitiveness. If this does not happen, it claims, the Baden-Württemberg success model will be at risk. Specifically, the university leaderships expect planning certainty throughout the whole duration of the Higher Education Financing Agreement III, the annual adjustment of basic finance by six percent and compensation for burdens caused by higher energy and staff costs precisely in the key seminal areas of research and teaching.
In view of the feared developments, the students of the University of Stuttgart have initiated a state-wide demonstration, which the student organizations of all state universities are joining. The central rally followed by a protest march will start at the Stadtgarten park in Stuttgart on Friday (15 November) at 12 noon.