Abstract

In order to improve the financial situation of universities, some German Länder have introduced tuition fees, which students must pay in addition to standard administrative charges. However, universities are encountering certain problems using these fees to finance staff positions. In North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, fees may only be used for instructional purposes or student support services. Therefore new academic staff positions financed by tuition fees must improve teaching and learning conditions directly, and the universities are barred from creating new research positions. Non-academic staff positions may be financed as long as they support newly-employed academic staff or enhance the learning environment by other means.

Furthermore, universities must accomplish these improvements in teaching and learning conditions in conjunction with increased enrolments. According to rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), which are reflected in administrative regulations at the Länder level, universities are obliged to utilize their full capacity in courses of study, subject to entrance requirements. By creating more staff positions in these courses, capacity will increase as well, resulting in no net improvement to the teacher-student ratio. To address this dilemma, all program requirements will have to be reevaluated. Replacing traditional courses of study with Bachelor's and Master's programs will provide an opportunity to establish more rigorous requirements from the outset.

Further difficulties arise from the legal rules governing staff contracts that are limited to a specific period of time. Since the continuing existence of tuition fees is far from certain in the long run, new staff will be employed on a limited basis only. Nevertheless, tying these contracts directly to tuition fees is not possible as such money is not supposed to be used for specific projects but for teaching in general. In the view of the Federal Labour Court (Bundesarbeitsgericht), the theoretical possibility of abolishing tuition fees in the future is not a sufficient ground for limiting staff contracts.