Germany has over 380 universities and they offer more than 17,000 programmes for students to choose from. Most of the German universities are public As a tradition, Germany tends not to rank its universities like many of other countries do so that all of universities in the country have an equal chance to attract students and funding from government and industry partners.

However, in order to raise the international visibility and attention of German universities, in 2006 the German Council of Science and Humanities and the German Research Foundation launched a so-called Excellence Initiative among the universities in Germany.  The initiative aims to promote cutting-edge research and to create outstanding conditions for young scholars at universities, to deepen cooperation between disciplines and institutions, to strengthen international cooperation of research, and to enhance the international appeal of excellent German universities.

There are three categories of funding:

• The establishment of more than 40 research schools for young scientists and PhD candidates, which will receive €1 million each per year.
• The creation of thirty so-called Clusters of Excellence, that connect universities with leading German research institutes and businesses. Annually, these clusters will receive around €6.5 million each to fund their work.
• The selection of 11 Universities of Excellence, which will be funded highly for their “future concepts”, i.e., institutional strategies to promote top-level university research. Particularly this third line of funding has drawn appreciable international attention, both in academia and media.

In 2019, for a third time 11 future concepts across 13 universities (including 1 university alliance involving 3 universities in Berlin) were selected for funding. Below is the list of them and their future concepts.

In the series of German Excellence Universities, we will introduce them one by one. Stay tuned.