The Hindu : International : Living on past glories

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 07, 2004

International

International

Living on past glories

HEIDELBERG, MAY 6. No doubt Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology, walked along the leafy Philosopher's Way above the Neckar river here, home of the university that is Germany's oldest and one of its most renowned. The philosopher Hegel, 100 years before, probably strode the path as well, maybe thinking about the ruse of history.

Hannah Arendt, the political philosopher and coiner of the term ``the banality of evil,'' studied here, and Rupert Wilhelm Bunsen, inventor of the burner used in chemistry labs, was on the faculty. So were seven winners of Nobel Prizes in Physics, Medicine or Chemistry.

It would not be right to say that the Ruprecht-Karl-Universitat Heidelberg has lost its lustre. More than 26,000 students study here, in a town of narrow streets and slate-roofed steeples, and a vast library with a collection of medieval manuscripts.

But there is a recognition that Heidelberg University, founded in 1386, is not as great as it used to be, and that illustrates a problem becoming increasingly acknowledged. There is a recognition here that something basic has to change if Europe is to regain the edge.

``It is definitely the case that we have not kept up the reputation we had in the past,'' said Peter Hommelhof, Heidelberg's Rector.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the Education Ministers of the 16 States have now announced a plan to form a group of what are being called elite universities with about $300 millions from the German Government, starting in 2006. In other countries such a proposal might seem like either a good idea or an inadequate one, but the principle of it would not shake the foundations of the culture. In Germany, where an egalitarian ideal has an almost theological status, the very notion of an elite has a subversive tinge.

In 1972 the German courts ruled that any graduate of a gymnasium, the more academically oriented part of the German high-school system, had a right to a university education entirely paid for by the state. At Heidelberg this led to a jump in enrolment, from fewer than 10,000 students to more than 30,000, before it settled to its current level.

Not everybody is happy with the idea of elite institutions, in large part because the government's proposal would involve not just money but, in the sharpest departure from the egalitarian ideal, a much higher degree of selection of some students over others. That idea has produced demonstrations and placards like the one declaring, ``Elite for Everybody.'' But there is little of the continuing opposition that other changes, like cutbacks in pensions or medical benefits, have provoked, probably because of a realisation that the country has, academically speaking, been living on its past glories.

Germany's production of Nobel laureates is often cited as evidence of the decline in the upper echelons. In the first third of the 20th century, Germany produced 25 Nobel winners in chemistry and physics, the most in the world. Between 1984 and 2003, Americans won 10 times as many Nobel Prizes as did Germans.

— New York Times News Service

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