The German Excellence Initiative: Changes, Challenges and Chances

Bernd Huber, Ludwig Maximilian University
2010

For more than 200 years, the German university system has followed the ideas of Wilhelm von  Humboldt — the unity of research and teaching, the freedom of teaching being the most important of Humboldt’s principles. These ideas have been followed until today, even though the external conditions that universities have to cope with have changed dramatically. On the one hand, the rising number of students