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Abstract
The impact of higher education reforms on teaching at faculty level in Germany has seldom been explored. Research on teaching at university so far centres on how to teach. Yet, before any (best) practice can take place, teaching requires a specific site where a specific teacher meets a specific number of students. To bring about teaching, teaching loads have to be matched with student numbers, which to a large degree depends on how existing policies interact. Drawing on actor-network theory, we show that due to a peculiar entanglement of the products of present as well as past policies – staff planning charts, curricular norm values, student numbers, block grants, etc. – in several cases administration defines teaching loads higher than the actual teaching staff at faculty level can provide. In order to close this gap, faculties have to accommodate a teaching load that is true to administrative calculations but fictional in reality. Paradoxically, the only way to do so within the given policy entanglement is to use academics for teaching on the premise that they explicitly do not count as teachers: they have to remain disconnected from the teaching faculty.
Acknowledgements
This work originates from the research project ‘STRUKAKALE – Wer lehrt was unter welchen Bedingungen? Untersuchung der Struktur akademischer Lehre an deutschen Hochschulen’ [Who teaches what under which conditions? Analysis of the structure of academic teaching at German higher education institutions] funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research [BMBF].
Notes
1. Knowing that the notion of a ‘teacher’ in higher education can sound rather disturbing because it blinds out research activities, we use the term to underline the focus on teaching in this article. However, this does neither favour teaching nor exclude research. While we struggle to actually find a clear distinction of two separable categories some evidence in this paper shows that especially the teaching we are concerned with is not possible without research (funding).
2. These include deans, vice-deans and faculty administration.
3. The ‘after’ in ‘after actor network theory’ is a methodological opening point – a fixed time event after which ANT evolves in new ways, integrates earlier works and leaves specific premises that lead into the direction of theoretical rigorousness (Law, Citation1999, Citation2009). It recognises and includes the multiplicity of studies that encircle this approach without them needing to be absolutely commensurable (cf. Fenwick & Edwards, Citation2010; Latour, Citation1999).
4. Harman raises important obstacles to such a view and he may be right (Harman, Citation2009; Latour et al., Citation2011). Yet, we follow Latour in pointing out that the focus is more on chasing the ‘prey’ – here: over-performing professors – than to thoroughly answer philosophers on every aspect of a coherent ontological foundation. The latter is only in so far necessary as to point out that actor-network theory is indeed aware of touching ontological questions while not being willing to sacrifice the “follow the actors”-approach through a re-foundation on thorough ontological pillars (cf. for STS research in general, Lynch, Citation2013).
5. These barriers are highly volatile: they can come and go from year to year and in most cases create relationships with higher secondary degree grades and waiting semesters. In short: the better the grade compared to other applicants, the earlier a student is allowed to study the degree of his choice. Admission in these terms does not signal exclusivity but overload: the faculty/student ratio in courses with grade barriers is probably higher than in similar courses without barriers.
6. Meanwhile, the teaching load has been differentiated further. For example, all states have introduced teaching professorships with a teaching load between 10 and 16 SWS. Furthermore, in some states the teaching loads of research associate can range from 4 to 20 SWS. So far, these new categories are not used commonly. Another distinction prevails between institutional types: at universities of applied sciences, the teaching loads are significantly higher.
7. In the humanities, it is a common practice to assign only half positions to doctoral researchers. (Ph.D. students are commonly employed as research associates at German universities.) In contrast, in the natural sciences they often get full positions as these face a stronger competition with the non-university labour market (industrial research and extramural research institutes; cf. Bloch & Würmann, Citation2013).
8. This means the teaching load of one semester is fixed and projected into the future for the regular duration of a degree programme for an individual student (e.g. 6 semesters × 72 SWS). This regular duration does not oblige the student to graduate in this time period. Rather, it is an actor that is both relevant for capacity law and for the individual curriculum trajectory by constantly pointing to a fictive endpoint of studying.
9. For example, the teaching load of an economics faculty amounts to 72 SWS per semester. It offers one bachelor degree programme of a regular duration of six semesters. 72 SWS multiplied by the regular duration of six semesters leads to an overall teaching load of 432 SWS. This then is divided by the CNW for bachelor programmes in economics, e.g. 2.5 (SWS). 173 study places are calculated as the intake capacity of this programme. In contrast, a degree programme in medicine with a CNW of 8,2 (SWS) could take in approximately 53 students. This is the basic idea. As degree programmes export and import courses and have student dropouts throughout the semesters these calculations become more complicated.
10. This is most common in medical degree programmes and psychology. However with the implementation of the bachelor/master degree structures and the decentralisation of admission procedures applicants to various degree programmes (e.g. Japan studies and business administration) take place as well.
11. Inner-university target agreements are neither published nor accessible.
12. Even before the cameralistic funding scheme was abolished staff planning charts were not necessarily fully funded. The responsibility, however, lay with the ministry and not, as it is now, with the university.
13. Any serious resource allocation by student enrolment must then strive to get rid of these positions as they may not meet their intake targets, especially in marginal subjects studied only by few students.
14. We ‘black-box’ the university leadership and university’s central administration as one entity.
15. For anonymity reasons these figures had to be slightly altered. Their relationship has been maintained.
16. The reason that courts seem to tolerate this has to do with the temporality of these funds. They do not build up capacity but only provide additional funds for a certain time period.
17. Data from course catalogue of other universities and inquiries on departmental level provide some evidence that this is a rather common phenomenon.
18. Their capacity indeed counts, even if it is not represented in the course catalogue.
19. During our research we found one-degree programme at a different university whose course catalogue is not publicly accessible in order to prevent lawsuits of rejected students.
20. This has been proposed by the German Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat, Citation2008) in order to allow for a flexible use of professors’ teaching loads. Basically, it is then up to the faculty with which personnel to supply its teaching load.
21. Such as the latest pact for quality in higher education teaching (Qualitätspakt Lehre) for which the federal government and the states supply extra funds of €2 billion until 2020 and which allows to hire extra teaching personnel only on the premise that it does not count for calculating the intake capacity.