The Mediocre Excellence

I. The Diagnosis

In 2000, the EU member states committed in the Lisbon Program to make Europe "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic area in the world" by 2010.

It is 2026. Europe has not become that.

Germany's answer to this challenge was the Excellence Initiative (2005-2017), later renamed Excellence Strategy. Since 2005, over 10 billion euros have been pumped into "excellence clusters" and "universities of excellence." The result can be summarized in one sentence:

This sentence comes from former Bremen Science Senator Eva Quante-Brandt. It was meant as praise. It is the most devastating verdict one can pass on an excellence program.

II. The Numbers

The proportions are grotesque:

The best German university in the THE Ranking 2024: TU Munich at rank 30.

One could argue that rankings aren't everything. That's true. But they're also not nothing — and they show a trend that has been going in the wrong direction for twenty years.

III. The Ineffectiveness

Various research teams examined the effects of the Excellence Initiative between 2017 and 2020. The results are sobering:

One study found a positive effect on the number of publications — but none on their quality. More papers, less impact. That's not excellence. That's busywork.

Thomas Sattelberger, who knows German science policy up close, no longer speaks of "excellence debates." He speaks of "excellence erosion debates."

IV. The Bureaucracy

The real scandal is not the money. It's the time.

An excellence application means: thousands of pages of application documents. Months, sometimes years of preparation. Hundreds of scientists who are not researching, but formulating. International reviewers who don't evaluate what has been achieved, but what is promised.

The American organizational researcher Barry Bozeman coined a term for administrative processes that serve no legitimizable purpose: "Red Tape" — bureaucratic idling.

The Excellence Initiative is institutionalized red tape.

Because the decisions follow a "deterministic logic," as researchers found: Those who are large get more. Those who have already been funded get funded again. The most important predictor for funding in the second phase was — funding in the first phase.

The Matthew Effect in its purest form: For to every one who has will more be given.

V. The Grant Poetry

What's written in the applications has little to do with science. It's its own art form: grant poetry.

You learn to use the right buzzwords. "Interdisciplinary." "Internationally visible." "Synergy effects." "Excellence cluster." You learn to sell visions, not results.

The Imboden Commission, which evaluated the Excellence Initiative in 2016, recommended a radical change of course: Universities should be evaluated for "Past Merit" — demonstrated achievements — not for "showcase projects."

The recommendation was ignored.

Instead, the system was perpetuated. New applications every seven years. "Redefining content" every seven years. The same bureaucratic madness every seven years.

VI. The Losers

Fixed-term rates of 70-90% in the academic middle level. Young researchers who swing from project to project. Unable to start families. Unable to conduct long-term research. Thrown out at 45 if they don't belong to the chosen few.

The Excellence Initiative did not create this situation. But it cemented it. Because every new excellence cluster means: new fixed-term positions. No permanent contracts.

Those who as scientists "drill thick boards" create excellence. But those who drill thick boards have no time for grant poetry. So the grant writers survive. Not the researchers.

VII. The Teaching

In public debate, it's criticized that teaching comes up short. That's an understatement.

Teaching has been systematically devalued. Successful researchers are freed from teaching duties — as a reward. This increases the burden on their colleagues. And it removes the best minds from the students.

4.6 billion for "excellence" in research. 2 billion for the "Quality Pact Teaching." The priorities are clear.

VIII. The Real Function

If the Excellence Initiative has no measurable effects on research quality — why is it continued?

The answer is brutally honest: Because it works. Just not for what it was intended.

IX. The Comparison

In the USA, there is no "Excellence Initiative." There are universities that are excellent — or want to become so. They compete for the best minds, not for the best applications.

In Switzerland, there is ETH Zurich. It is excellent because it is well-funded, because it pays its people well, because it gives them freedom. Not because it writes an application every seven years.

Germany has chosen a third way: Excellence through bureaucracy. The results speak for themselves.

X. The Conclusion

The Excellence Initiative is the perfect symbol for what's wrong in German science and innovation policy:

More administration instead of more research.
More promises instead of more results.
More competition for titles instead of for insights.

A system has been created that produces mediocre excellence. An excellence that looks good in glossy brochures. That can be quoted in press releases. That still lands somewhere between 30 and 100 in rankings — far enough ahead not to be embarrassing, but far enough behind not to be a threat.

Mediocre excellence is not an accident. It is the result of a system that rewards exactly that: mediocrity that disguises itself as the top.