Improving conditions for foreign students
Bilingual study courses and a dismantling of bureaucracy have been launched at German universities and other higher-learning institutions to make them more attractive to foreign students and academics. The new joint-initiative has been taken by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel and Federal Minister for Education, Science and Technology Jurgen Ruttgers.
The planned improvements are key elements of an effort to step up scientific and economic cooperation with other regions of the world. Ruttgers noted that foreign counterparts and decisionmakers who studied in Germany are not only "door-openers for industry" but also the allies of German universities and colleges in developing mutually-beneficial academic exchanges.
In recent years, Germany has lost some of its attraction for qualified foreign applicants. In 1996, the number of foreigners studying here remained stagnant at 130,000, or 7.3 percent of the overall university population. Regions such as Africa, Latin America and Asia are clearly under-represented.
The main foreign element at German universities study languages and culturally related subjects. There's a below- average representation in law, economics and social sciences. Art and theology colleges have the largest contingents from abroad but there is little foreign interest in study at technical and other specialized colleges because some of the qualifications are not universally recognized.
The federal government is concentrating on building up a network of cooperation between German universities and colleges with partners outside Europe -- a German Student Exchange Program modeled on university exchange schemes operated by the European Union.
The intention is for it to become a matter of course for German educational establishments to project their image abroad and recruit young foreign academics. Ruttgers, the minister responsible for education at federal level, plans to initiate internationally orientated model courses at German universities in which half of the students are German, the rest foreigners.
There is to be a review of German graduation regulations and changes made so that, in future, universities here will be able to award internationally recognized academic degrees either together with or as an alternative to purely German degrees.
The universities are to review rules on the award of doctorates, with the object of admitting foreign-language dissertations in cases where research work is to be carried out in a foreign language at a German institute.