Academic merger aims to push Germany up world rankings

Picture courtesy Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe

A world league table of universities published earlier this month was a slap in the face for Germany, the world’s largest export economy. The highest-ranked university in the country, Ludwig-Maximilians-
Universität in Munich, holds spot number 53, while the University of Karlsruhe, one of three universities recently dubbed elite in Germany’s Excellence Initiative, was ranked somewhere between number 203 and 304 on the list of 500.

The lowly and embarrassing standing in the league table, published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is despite the fact that Germany is the world’s leading exporter of research-intensive goods and registers 288 patents per 1 million job holders, above the OECD average.

This fifth annual survey Shanghai survey cannot have come as much of a surprise to the University of Karlsruhe, which has said openly that it is trying to improve its standing in international rankings. As part of Karlsruhe’s winning bid to become one of the country’s elite universities it drew up a proposal to merge with the neighbouring Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany’s second largest research centre and a long-time partner of the university.

If all goes as envisioned, the new school, to be called the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), will become a model for the German research community. As well as going a step further than the typical cooperation agreements between researchers and their university counterparts, it will be the first major merger of a predominantly federally funded research centre with a state-funded technical university.

The formation of the new institute of technology was only possible after representatives from both sides persuaded state and federal officials to sit down and work out the funding.

“The German scientific and educational communities see this as a pilot project,” said Professor Reinhard Maschuw, a member of the board of the Forschungszentrum.

The new school will feature wider fields of competencies and broader possibilities for comprehensive research than the two institutions alone, Maschuw said.

In total, KIT will employ 8,000 staff with an annual budget of more than €500 million. The new entity will focus on research, teaching and innovation, and offer student services atypical at German universities, such as career and networking opportunities. It will also ramp up its efforts at technology transfer.

In July, the university and the research centre held their first press conference to present the merged entity to the public and detail plans for competing with the best universities worldwide. Unusually, this plan was refined with the help of management consultants Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Managing the change process

As a rule, BCG only works for the private sector, but it dedicated three full-time consultants on a pro bono basis to the six-month project of planning the integration of the university and the research centre. Their task was to manage the planning process and help KIT structure the work, using BCG methodology and tools usually reserved for companies.

“I remember the presentation where we introduced ourselves,” said Martin Woertler, a consultant on the project. “There was some scepticism. No one had worked with consultants. We presented what needs to be done – organising, communicating, structuring the working groups and reviewing the results of working groups.”

Karlsruhe approached Woertler, a graduate of the university, about helping with the integration plan, and BCG got on board early this year.

“KIT will be a fit culturally,” Woertler says, adding, “There are differences, of course. The university has a different task and a different tradition than the research centre, but the existing cooperation shows clearly that targets will be reached.”

Maschuw says KIT surmounted the major hurdle when it got representatives from state and federal education ministries to agree on joint funding. The next big hurdle will be combining the cultures of the two in the new organisation.

“University professors are free to research and teach what they want, but then they need money, and that’s where the freedom ends,” said Maschuw. On the other hand, “Researchers [from the research centre] are accustomed to programme-oriented research. Many people still have to realise the potential KIT represents for their own research projects.”

Technology transfer division to be expanded

Besides additional services for students, such as career services, an industry club to bring together students and companies and better teacher/student ratios, the new KIT will buttress its technology-transfer division.

At present, the research centre has a central service office that coordinates patent applications, spin-offs, licensing and business development. At the university, each department manages these tasks itself. Under the new KIT structure, the central office will be enlarged and in charge of all tech-transfer work.

Currently, the research centre’s patent office registers about 60 patents per year and manages 1,700 patents. It also breathes life into about two start-ups each year, says Jens Fahrenberg, head of marketing, patents and licences, and future head of KIT’s Innovation division.

“The university has 120 institutes, 300 professors and 20,000 students, but no technology transfer division. We are combining our services for the new university. The University of Karlsruhe has lots of potential for start-ups, but they lack support. The number of start-ups can rise,” Fahrenberg said.

Fahrenberg finds the KIT merger ideal since it combines the university, with its close ties to industry, with the research centre and its basic research.

The merger to create KIT will take place in phases. The first is set to be effective on 1 January 2008, with the start of coordinated work focused on energy, nano- and microtechnologies and elementary particle and astro-particle physics. The goal is a full merger within the next three to five years.  

And while Maschuw acknowledges that a university only reaches elite status when outsiders call it a top institution, he hopes this can happen for the new KIT within the next five to ten years.