Tenure track positions for postdocs in Germany

Source: Thorsten Naeser/Map

Bright prospects: after six years, an associate professorship is possible

Tenure track is the holy grail for any budding academic in these fiscally constrained times of temporary and even zero-hour contracts. Such posts offering real chances for career development have been the norm in North America for many years but are rare in some European countries.

In Germany, such schemes were non-existent until 2012, according to Wolfgang Herrmann, president of the Technical University of Munich. The university introduced them two years ago and plans to provide 100 more tenure track professorships by 2020.

“A university of high standing needs to cope with the increasing competition within Europe, and also with other parts of the world, for the best brains,” Professor Herrmann said.

The “biggest problem” with the traditional German system is that young people hired on low-level professorships do not progress up the hierarchy even if they perform exceptionally well, he explained.

“If you are interested in moving up the hierarchy you have to change university…which really makes no sense,” he said. Such a system also makes German universities less attractive internationally to bright scholars when compared with leading US institutions that offer tenure track positions, Professor Herrmann reasoned.

Now the university is teaming up with research powerhouse the Max Planck Society to offer tenure-track assistant professorships to early career scientists accepted on to a scheme run by the society called the research group leader programme.

The programme gives promising researchers with up to seven years’ postdoctoral experience the opportunity to run small research groups at its institutes, of which there are 82 across Germany.

The society and the university will appoint the researchers jointly, and projects will typically last for five to six years.

Successful candidates will become an assistant professor at the university and, at the same time, a research group leader at one of the Max Planck Institutes.

At the Technical University of Munich, the assistant professors would be expected to teach two hours a week, three fewer than traditional assistant professors based solely at the university, and the research will take place at the institutes. “He or she can learn more about the university system and how it works,” Professor Herrmann said.

He added that after six years, subject to performance, the candidates would be eligible to join the university in a permanent post of associate professor with the option to progress to full professor over time.

Peter Gruss, president of the Max Planck Society, said: “Our young junior scientists come to us from the world’s top research institutions…It would be a great shame to let them leave again. We need to offer them internationally competitive posts in Germany for their next career move.”

Applications to the programme are sought from postdoctoral researchers in the natural and life sciences, and medicine.

holly.else@tsleducation.com