Success before the storm

‘We are so proud that we are all pulling in the same direction, but we fail to realise that the rope is around our necks,’ remarked the chemist Siegfried Pohl at the January meeting of the University Senate of the University of Oldenburg, when the issue once again arose of distributing the cuts imposed by the state government across the individual departments of the university through a consensus-based process. Pohl’s stark image is by no means an exaggeration, especially as it seems the waves of cuts over the past two years are merely the beginning of a major storm. The government is even promising a hurricane. According to current decisions, the Ministry of Science is to cut 450 million marks from its four-billion-mark budget from 1997 onwards. No one really wants to take these figures seriously, but if ultimately even a quarter of that remains, we can no longer proceed according to the motto: ‘A little less everywhere.’ The consequences would be the closure of entire university campuses in Lower Saxony, or at the very least of academic departments and subjects.

At times like these, there is a real danger that achievements will be overshadowed by the dark clouds of the approaching storm. This is also the case in Oldenburg. Many people are still unaware that the university has just completed the most successful year in its short history. In 1995, it reaped the rewards of the systematic work of previous years – probably just in the nick of time:

• The German Council of Science and Humanities gave the go-ahead for the new lecture centre;
• Lower Saxony and Bremen agreed to build the Hanse Research Centre in Delmenhorst;
• the building for the OFFIS Institute of Computing Science, designed to accommodate 150 staff, was completed;
• the Ministry of Science approved Philosophy and Jewish Studies as independent degree programmes.

But that was not all. At the end of the year, the University, together with the University of Bremen, was awarded a Collaborative Research Centre on ‘Neurocognition’ by the German Research Foundation (DFG). For the biologists, physicists and psychologists working on this major project, this means at least six years of financial support for their research from the DFG.

Amidst the upheaval that has been sweeping through the higher education landscape in the final years of this millennium – and which will undoubtedly bring about profound changes – these successes serve as vital pillars for maintaining the University of Oldenburg at its current scale and for creating the conditions necessary for its expansion. Admittedly, the latter seems illusory given the financial situation of the public sector. However, the state government remains committed to establishing a Department of Engineering at the university. The university, politicians, the business community and trade unions all agree that this investment is what the economically disadvantaged region needs as the most important infrastructure measure for the coming years.

Yours,

Gerhard Harms