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Joybrato Mukherjee (2021): Cause for "serious concern"
Photo: Metodi Popov / IMAGO
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) warns of the consequences of planned funding cuts.
The institution announced that 6,000 scholarships could be lost if the federal government actually implements its budget plans.
The DAAD is responsible for promoting international academic exchange.
This year, according to the cabinet decision, he will have to make do with nine million euros less, and next year another four million euros will be lost.
The cuts are a "considerable cut in the financial resources and thus in the global work of the DAAD," said President Joybrato Mukherjee.
"They will significantly reduce our funding opportunities for universities, students and scientists for years to come." Mukherjee warned that the savings could make Germany less attractive as a location for science.
This gives cause for “serious concern”.
Consequences for students, doctoral candidates and researchers
According to the DAAD, financial support from the Federal Foreign Office is to be reduced from 204 million euros in 2021 to around 195 million euros this year.
Next year, the DAAD should only get 191 million euros.
On Friday, the DAAD listed a number of consequences that the savings would entail.
The allocation of long-term study and doctoral scholarships for foreign students, doctoral candidates and researchers must be reduced by 50 percent, which means that around 700 long-term scholarships per year will be lost.
Funding for lecture and conference trips, summer and winter courses and all other short-term funding must also be canceled, which affects around 5,000 people a year.
Lectureships and lectureships at foreign universities could not be filled, so in the medium term around 100 of the almost 450 locations worldwide where scientists represent the German university system will disappear.
At universities, the funds for supervising international students would be halved.
In addition, regionally oriented cooperation programs of German universities would have to accept drastic losses.
bbr/AFP