Berlin Corona also damages science. At the universities, various research collaborations with industry broke off last year – the situation could worsen dramatically in 2021 because expiring projects will not be replaced.
This threatens a setback for one of the central goals of the federal government. Its declared aim was to support the transfer from research to business in order to strengthen the economy. The Union and the SPD wanted to “sustainably strengthen this transfer as the central pillar of our research and innovation system and achieve substantial increases,” says the coalition agreement.
But for the Corona year 2020, the universities put the losses due to the withdrawal of companies at an “upper double-digit million amount,” says the President of the University Rectors’ Conference (HRK), Peter-André Alt.
For 2021 there was a risk of losses “that go far beyond that”. It is about the elimination of direct industrial funds, but also national and EU funds in connection with business cooperation.
“In view of the economic challenges of the corona pandemic, external partners, in particular small and medium-sized German medium-sized enterprises, are often withdrawing for this and the next few years, so that joint research projects can no longer be carried out, or it will be very difficult”, warns Alt.
The President of the Alliance of Leading Technical Universities (TU9), Wolfram Ressel, is also alarmed. Most of the collaborations with industry take place at its universities. “Project contents are increasingly being reduced, planned research projects are being put on hold and approved funding phases are being canceled without replacement,” says Ressel – and this development is even “much more worrying” than the failures in the previous year.
Last but not least, the overhead funds from industrial projects “that are urgently needed to finance university operations” would also be eliminated, says Ressel, who heads the University of Stuttgart. This is money that helps to finance general costs such as rooms or heating.
The federal government should help
Ressel has also noticed that TU9 is “already showing a clear reluctance to develop new R&D activities”. However, the consequences would “only really be visible with a delay” – and not only financially, “but in a second wave also structurally and socio-economically be felt”.
Many collaborations do not just consist of bilateral projects between a university and a company, but are “networks of local, national and international partners in which the lack of individual key projects can become a problem for an entire research and development cluster,” warns Ressel.
At the individual level, qualification work by students and doctoral candidates who are involved in projects with the economy is “delayed, interrupted or even impossible”. The TU9 President reports that many of the employees who were employed externally with the help of third-party funding could no longer be employed and complete their doctoral degrees.
In order to avert damage, both Alt and Ressel are calling for help from the federal government – similar to those promised to non-university research organizations as part of the Corona future package in summer 2020. At that time, the Federal Ministry of Research had set up a “replacement financing fund” of 400 million euros each for 2020 and 2021. Research organizations are compensated from this if they lose project money from the economy during the pandemic.
For 2020, however, only half, exactly 206 million euros, was approved from the pot, the ministry said at the request of the Greens. Almost all of the money went to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, which specializes in application-oriented research.
The fact that the universities were denied help from the future package was already “with astonishment” in 2020, reports HRK President Alt. After all, universities are “also indispensable actors and important drivers in cooperative application-oriented research with companies”. Now that the failures are clearly recognizable, “it would only be fair” if the universities were to receive compensation for the industrial funds, “demands Ressel.
Greens: Federal government leaves universities out in the rain
The opposition sees it similarly: “The corona crisis must not turn into an innovation crisis,” warns the innovation policy spokeswoman for the Green parliamentary group, Anna Christmann. Because some companies “are forced to save on research and development as well and fail as important cooperation partners of research institutes, this threatens both non-university research institutions and universities”.
The Greens are therefore calling for the fund to be expanded to include the universities and for them to be given the unused 200 million from 2020. The Ministry of Research rejects this, however, it says unequivocally in the letter to the Greens, which the Handelsblatt has received.
The minister’s goal of supporting the transfer from research to business is endangered by Corona.
(Photo: dpa)
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It is “completely incomprehensible why the federal government leaves the universities out in the rain,” criticized Christmann. One must “urgently counteract the death of projects in research and development in order to avert fatal long-term consequences for our innovation location”. This would affect science and business alike.
Research Minister Anja Karliczek (CDU) is “once again insufficiently committed to Germany as a location for innovation. The concerns from science ricochet off her unheard ”, criticizes the Green.
TU9 President Ressel is already looking further into the future: “In addition, medium-term strategies for targeted federal programs to promote research projects between universities and business are urgently needed.” Technical universities in particular are due to their combination of basic research, application-oriented research and systematic transfer into the economy “the cornerstone of the German innovation landscape”.
More: Universities are losing internationality due to the corona
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