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Students in Leipzig (symbol image): Highly competitive selection
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Those affected reported insecurity and dependency: Using the hashtag #ichbinhanna, scientific employees criticized the working conditions in the scientific community last year.
The protest was also directed against the Science Time Contract Act, which provides the framework for the chain limitations that many of those affected suffer from.
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research had the controversial law evaluated after it was reformed in 2016.
Now the results are there.
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According to the evaluation, which was carried out by Interval GmbH in cooperation with the HIS Institute for Higher Education Development, the contract terms have increased as a result of the reform - from 15 to 17 months in 2015 to 21 to 22 months in 2017. However, they fell then off again.
According to the report available to SPIEGEL, there is no continuous development here.
The main reason for the increase is the increase in three-year contracts.
"Obviously, however, the contract terms are regularly shorter than the usual doctoral or habilitation periods," the study authors determined.
This raises the question of which standard is to be applied.
The law only provides that the period must be "reasonable."
In addition, there are always a number of contracts that run for less than a year.
At universities and technical colleges, the proportion is one third, and at non-university research institutions and university clinics at least one quarter of fixed-term employment contracts.
A small proportion of employees are disproportionately affected by this: 47 percent of short-term contracts account for ten percent.
"There is still a clear need for improvement," said Federal Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (FDP) when the report was presented on Friday.
In addition to the short-term contracts, she is bothered by the fact that the number of temporary positions is still high.
According to the report, 93 percent of the non-doctoral academic staff are employed on a temporary basis, while the figure is 63 percent for those with a doctorate or habilitation.
Stark-Watzinger said that this proportion must fall, especially among employees with a doctorate.
The Minister also sees the universities as having an obligation.
The Science Time Contract Act gives the scientific institutions the opportunity to set a time limit, but in no way obliges them to do so.
"The universities could also hire in the long term."
After the presentation of the report, the President of the German Rectors' Conference (HRK), Peter-André Alt, said that science and politics are called upon to ensure attractive employment conditions beyond this framework under labor law.
Discourse goes beyond framework conditions
The fact that 74 percent of those with a doctorate are aiming for a job in science in the medium term speaks for the continuing attractiveness of scientific work, said Alt. However, the evaluation also showed that those who hoped for a permanent job in science often take a rather critical view of the qualification process .
Alt made the competitive situation responsible for this: A sober analysis includes recognizing that employment opportunities in science are limited and the selection process is highly competitive.
more on the subject
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This, in turn, was rejected by Lisa Janotta from the network for good work in science.
With the support of Ver.di, the network has created its own evaluation of the special fixed-term law regulated in the Science Time Contract Act and also presented it on Friday.
The narrow bottleneck is a German specificity, said Janotta, the scientific community in the USA and Denmark shows that things can be done better.
Nevertheless, her network and the union, like the HRK President, called for working conditions to be looked at beyond the law.
The evaluation commissioned by the ministry can only make a rudimentary contribution to this.
The order was to examine the effect of the novella, said study author Jörn Sommer at the presentation in Berlin.
»The current specialist discourse is much more about whether fixed-term contracts are good at all.«
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It was already agreed in the coalition agreement that the science contract law would be reformed again.
According to the minister, the aim is to take further steps in the first half of the legislative period.
All groups involved are invited to discuss the results of the evaluation at the Federal Research Ministry at the end of June.