"We want to grow"  [02.12.07]

Greater networking, increased internal competition, a new quality management system: the University of Hohenheim presents its Structural and Development Plan as a strategic paper.

The Universität Hohenheim wants to grow: around 20 percent more students will be populating the campus in less than five years time. New Chairs, better equipment and more intensive student support and care should bring about an improved level of teaching and extended academic and scientific centres will focus and improve our research skills and expertise. The Universität Hohenheim will fundamentally remain a university focused on Life Sciences, with core expertise in Agricultural Sciences and also in Economic Science. “We will not promote one area at the cost of another“, Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Liebig, the Rector of the University, made this clear a press conference yesterday. In contrast, target-setting, productivity bonuses and other tools will be used to generate internal competition for increasingly scarce resources. An increased level of networking both within the region and globally will complement the university’s own work and quality management and intermediate evaluations will guarantee a continuing high standard of work.

With its Structural and Development Plan, the Universität Hohenheim is the first university in the country to set specific targets and objectives for the next five years, to take stock of the last five years and to outline specific measures as to how its vision will become reality. “An ambitious plan, with which the Universität Hohenheim will underline its position as a unique, highly specialised university“, is the judgement of Dr. h.c. Matthias Kleinert who, as Chairman of the University Council, is supervising and monitoring the strategic development, in the Council’s role as a Supervisory Board. He then went on to promise that “as a supervisory body, we will be regularly monitoring the intermediate stages and measuring the results after five years against this strategic paper.“

Vision

By focusing on four specific areas, the Universität Hohenheim is hoping to make a substantial contribution to the economic development and sustainability of the state of Baden-Württemberg and to lay down basic principles for solving social problems. These four areas are:

• Agricultural and nutritional science within the food chain

• Energy and raw material supply from agriculture

• Biological signals

• Innovation and service

The guiding principles, according to Prof. Dr. Liebig, should be internationalism, innovation and interdisciplinarity and sustainability. Strong networks, both with partners in the region and with other international networks, will complement the range of courses on offer within the university. In addition to providing regular teaching, the Universität Hohenheim will also contribute to life-long learning and extending its further education programme. Internally the University is aiming to create a climate of partnership and commitment to performance in a democratic working environment. This also includes a commitment to gender mainstreaming.

Challenges and Measures

The Rector and the Chairman of the University Council have highlighted four main challenges which the University simply has to be able to meet. These include an increased level of competition amongst universities for above-average researchers and students, as well as for funding and research partnership. There is also a problem of capacity if the numbers of students, both within the region and nationally, shoot up as is currently predicted. At the same time the introduction of tuition fees is creating pressure to offer an improved level of teaching. This increased demand, together with the pressure of competition and quality, is much harder due to the lack of resources. “It doesn’t matter whether we are speaking about money, staff or space – we do not have enough of any of these!“ Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Liebig goes on to confirm.

Increased competition

The Universität Hohenheim wants to confront the competitive pressure by creating a very clear profile, which will be unique within Germany. “We have encouraged the University, with its four areas of focus, to take up two clear positions – Economic Science and Life Sciences – on which it will focus and concentrate its strengths“, states Dr. Matthias Kleinert. And now these focus areas are to be broken down further in that the individual faculties will also create clearer profiles.

Increasingly the plan is to concentrate focused R & D, beyond the boundaries of individual faculties, in academic and scientific centres, as the university has done with the Centre for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture, Life Sciences, Eastern Europe Innovation and Service and Gender and Nutrition. “Researchers can no longer fund themselves as lone warriors. The Centres create an ideal research environment and bring people from different disciplines together – a major plus at a time when the most exciting R & D findings are being made in the grey areas between individual disciplines“, Prof. Dr. Liebig went on to explain.

In order to complement its own curriculum, the University is looki to promote greater networking, both within the region and on an international level. “On a regional level we are particularly active within two network groups – on a university level with the Universities of Tübingen, Stuttgart and Ulm. We are also active within a group known as the “Tübingen-Hohenheim University Region“, which unites two universities and 4 technical universities, something that is quite unique within Germany. We are looking to increase our work within both networks,“ said Prof. Dr. Liebig. On a global level, the Universität Hohenheim is currently seeking partnerships with a small number of select leading partners: “Really the best in their respective countries in our specialist areas,“ Prof. Dr. Liebig went on to say.

All of these measures are going to be complemented in future by a quality assurance system, which will include all areas of the University. The University Council has asked the University to define clear objectives and to report back annually to outline how far they have progressed towards reaching these goals“, the Chairman of the University Council Dr. h.c. Kleinert explained. This desire is possibly one reason why the Universität Hohenheim is far ahead of the other regional universities with its structural and development plan. “We started some three years ago to evaluate all the different parts of the university. Based on this we then defined our objectives and targets with the Structural and Development Plan and thus created the basis for a quality management system“, Prof. Dr. Liebig summed up.

Increasing student numbers

The number of school leavers with an Abitur leaving certificate will increase by around 30% by the year 2012 before reaching a plateau around 2020. “We have set ourselves the challenge of teaching more students by growing stronger“, stated Prof. Dr. Liebig. The University is planning 420 new student places in the new courses by 2012:

• Sustainable raw material and bioenergy: a total of 30 new places

• Health management: a total of 150 new places

• European Innovation and Service Management: a total of 150 new places (60 in the first year).

• Nutrition Management: a total of 60 new places

• Bio-Analysis and Experimental Biotechnology: a total of around 30 places (in the second phase still to be agreed with the MWK).

“In doing so we are looking in particular to support the economic sectors which currently have a lack of highly-qualified staff.“

To provide this teaching and pastoral care, the University is planning 15 new Chairs with more then 30 new members of staff. In addition there would already be at least 20 new members of staff (without the 2012 Expansion Programme) funded by the tuition fees to provide lecturing and pastoral care. A committee including students’ representatives has worked out how the tuition fees are to be used in general, in order to advise the Rectorate in the decision-making process. “We have still to gain experience in this area“, commented Prof. Dr. Liebig. How successful the current investments made possible by the tuition fees will be, will be reassessed after one year, in order to adjust the allocation formula if necessary.

A Lack of Resources

“There is a lack of everything: money, space and staff“, is how the Rector Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Liebig had summarised the current situation at the start of his talk. The Solidarity Pact II (Solidarpakt II) had secured subsidies from the region for a further five years at the 1997 level. This is the basis upon which contracts with universities, still to be concluded, can produce reallocations between the different universities. This means that funding for the Universität Hohenheim can still rise or fall even within the Solidarity Pact II. In order to cope with the increasing numbers of students, the region has published its 2012 Expansion Programme but “even here a substantial contribution is expected from the universities themselves. At the same time the commitment of business is regrettably still somewhat behind its earlier announcements.“

Key in all of this is the Rector’s commitment to all sectors of the University as a whole. “We want to grow as an entity and not at the cost of certain sectors.“ Even recently the Universität Hohenheim had had to lay off certain positions in Agricultural Science to increase the number of positions within Economic and Social Sciences. “I now regard this reorganisation of the faculties as being behind us.“

In future those areas will obtain resources, which acquire funding from outside or can demonstrate their competitiveness within the University by their performance. “Within the University Council, we welcome the fact that the management of the University will be drawing up target agreements in future with the individual faculties and generally intensifying internal competition“, commented the Chairman of the University Council, Dr. h.c. Matthias Kleinert. Instead of allocating available staff, space and resources directly to the individual professors, as was previously the case, the management of the University now hopes in future to allocate a percentage of the available resources to a pool of availably to be set up in each faculty, and for which the individual Chairs have to re-apply each time. It is also planned that newly appointed professors will in future only receive a part of their “allowance“ after a period of time, in order to be measured by their performance.

On a staff level, the Universität Hohenheim is hoping to create added value in terms of performance by intensifying staff training. “The administration has taken the first steps along this path and we now have to intensify the whole process,“ explained Prof. Dr. Liebig. The Universität Hohenheim is planning to improve its use of lecture rooms by means of an electronic room and space management system, in order to alleviate the acute shortage of space. The Rector Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Liebig explained that up to now the allocation of lecture rooms had been the boss’ job.

In order to increase transparency and provide some latitude within the plans, the Universität Hohenheim is going to be introducing a multi-year-long budget plan. At the same time it is planning to make housekeeping more commercial and increase financial control.

Starting Point and Review

The Universität Hohenheim has laid down a good foundation for its future plans over the last five years, according to the estimation of the Rector and the Chairman of the University Council.

“By setting targets with the state of Baden-Württemberg, we have already been able to expand Life Sciences and Communications Science. Four English-speaking courses have given us an international boost and our current target of growing to over 5000 students has been far exceeded with a current student population of 6000 students,“ added Prof. Dr. Liebig. The research project is also well-advanced to develop a process to select students and to support them academically, something that is also part of the target setting agreed with the state of Baden-Württemberg.

At the same time, the Universität Hohenheim has also completed the, at times, difficult task of restructuring the three faculties. Furthermore in the last five years it has also set up two academic and scientific centres – Innovation and Service and Gender and Nutrition – and developed the Food Chain concept, which includes research into food production in the field and on the farm, sometimes using molecular biological methods throughout the whole food processing chain to research and support medicine and economic market and consumer studies.

“We also carried out a strengths and weaknesses analysis as part of an internal evaluation of all faculties. These findings have already given us a very detailed picture but have not yet been finally evaluated“, states Prof. Dr. Liebig. The assessments from the academic and scientific centres, the test and experimental stations and the state institutes have already painted a very positive picture. “It can clearly be seen that an increased concentration of knowledge and expertise has grown in these centres over the years“, Prof. Dr. Liebig then went on to say. The test and experimental stations have proved themselves to be invaluable. “They are confirmation of the fact that whatever is tested under laboratory conditions, can only be truly developed for practical use in the test and experimental stations,“ the Rector explained. The state institutes have also proved to be a valuable instrument for transferring knowledge and expertise into business.

Within the internal service sector, the Universität Hohenheim has also increased student support and research funding. “We also want to carry out a restructuring programme within our administration in order to further increase its efficiency.“ The findings of the evaluation also showed that the sectors of further education, work transition and business start-up were also in need of reform. “There is exceptional individual performance here but, from an organisational point of view, the sectors need greater cohesion.

Prof. Dr. Liebig was also able to cite praise from outside. In its Recommendations for the Development of Agricultural Science in Germany, within the context of associated fields (landscaping, forestry and nutritional science), the Science Council described the leading role played nationally by the Hohenheim agricultural scientists in nutritional science and food technology as exceptional. The report praised all of the agricultural courses at the Universität Hohenheim.

Hohenheim Business Information Technology was also praised for its good performance in research in the report’s evaluation of all Information Science courses. The integrative model of the Economic Science course, which combines economics and political economics and complements this with social economics and law, was also praised. It was also recommended that the University should increase its R & D work in this field. This specific recommendation has already been implemented by setting up the Academic and Scientific Centre for Innovation and Service.

Contact for press:

Florian Klebs, University of Hohenheim,
Press and Communications,
Tel. 0711 459-22001, e-mail: klebs@zentrale.uni-hohenheim.de

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