The talk took place at the Buceri­us Law School in Hamburg – a pri­vate university in its own right – and also included the presidents of sev­eral well-known state universities: Jürgen Hesselbach (Technische Uni­versität Braunschweig), Wolfgang Herrmann (Technische Universität München) and Dieter Lenzen (Freie Universität Berlin).

The very first private university in Germany was located in Witten/Herdecke and established in 1982. Since then, the number of private universities in Germany has mush­roomed.

In Germany, private universi­ties are accredited by the Wissen­schaftsrat (German Science and Hu­manities Council). An accreditation is supposed to provide certainty in the minds of students and employ­ees that a college possesses ‘univer­sity character’: that is, the right to call itself a university. This council usually evaluates around five pri­vate universities in Germany.

Yet a striking number of twenty private universities applied for ac­creditation last year.

Does this signal a change in col­lege structures in Germany, and suggest that private universities may be outdistancing state schools? Are private universities a serious competition to state-run universi­ties?

Many German universities, state-run and private, have succeeded in establishing a good reputation, many as so-called ‘research univer­sities’.

Yet an important distinction be­tween private and state universi­ties seems to be the dropout rate: roughly 30-percent at state univer­sities, but much lower at private universities.

President Treusch stated during the discussion that Jacobs Univer­sity has a graduation rate of 95-percent among all those who study here. The low dropout rate may be due to the cost of tuition fees: the higher the fees are, the more incen­tive students have not to waste edu­cational opportunities.

Another factor might be that private universities can decide se­lectively who to admit and thus will choose those which seem to be the most hard-working and most quali­fied. However, state universities also have a selection process, either via numerous classes or by requir­ing samples of previous work.

Treusch assumed the position of President at Jacobs University – then International University Bremen – in 2006 and in so doing adopted a university experiencing a financial shortfall. Bremen-born businessman Klaus Jacobs was able to donate a generous €200-million, saving then-IUB from bankruptcy.

Yet Treusch admitted that this financial danger still exists for Jacobs, and is a common feature of most private universities. A €200-mil­lion dona­tion is a lot­tery win, he suggested, but the time will come in the near future when Jacobs will depend increasingly on external funds again.

Third-party funds are needed to support both the university and those students with financial need. Treusch remained proud, however, that Jacobs has a stipend fund and pursues need-blind selection of stu­dents.

Treusch was also optimistic, not­ing that a time may come when the first millionaire graduates will be able to aid Jacobs financially, in a manner similar to the alumni con­tributions at American universities.

The panel discussion was fo­cused largely on “universities as enterprises” and the aspect of com­petition.

The proposition was made that state universities could improve competitiveness by partial priva­tization of certain branches of study fields such as pharmaceuti­cal science or veterinary medicine, whereas private universities could emulate state universities in seek­ing more external cooperation.

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