EDUCATION: Germany Loses Decades-Long Lead in Science

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis Yojana Sharma

BERLIN, Jun 8 2000 (IPS) - Germany’s reputation for turning out top- class scientists and engineers has taken a severe knocking.

A study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, suggests the country is falling behind in science education.

The decline of Germany’s science sector, although evident to many in industry and academia, had not been cause for much soul searching.

That is, until earlier this year, when German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder launched a campaign to import information technology workers from India and Eastern Europe to bridge a severe shortfall in Information Technology specialists in the country.

“Are Germans too dumb to learn computing?” screamed a cover story in the weekly “Stern” magazine.

Other newspapers and magazines reflected public astonishment that science graduates from developing countries, and former communist nations had quietly outstripped German science graduates in quality and quantity.

Hans Olaf Henkel, president of the German Association for Industry, said the country needs to import not just computer specialists but other scientists because “compared to other education systems worldwide, ours continues to fail us.”

He was one of the first to blame the shortfall of German- trained scientists on the country’s outdated science education.

Two years ago one of the largest comparative studies of its kind, the Third International Maths and Science Study, tested thousands of school children in 42 countries.

It ranked Germany as only middling in science education at secondary level, well behind South East Asian countries whose levels were “unattainable” for German school children, the study said.

Several Eastern European countries also outstripped the performance of German children.

The study was seen as a wake-up call. But it was the need to import IT specialists from poorer countries and several speeches by Schroeder that the country needed “to learn from India”, that has been deeply unsettling for Germans used to seeing themselves as world leaders in technology and science.

“Germany has not necessarily become worse,” notes Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, but “other countries reformed their education system at a considerably fast pace” while Germany rested on its laurels.

Countries like Britain, Singapore and Austria completely overhauled secondary and primary school science syllabi in the early 1990s to make them less abstract and more relevant to today’s youth.

Professor Manfred Prenzel, Director of the Institute of Science Education in Kiel, says that science teaching in German schools is still traditional.

“Dialogue between teachers and students is still narrowly oriented towards one right solution leading to a narrow understanding of science.”

“We need a change in learning approaches to motivate students. More focus on the usefulness of science in every day life and the relevance of science. We need to move towards a more process- oriented problem-solving approach.”

Even at primary school level, Prenzel believes more science was taught a decade ago compared to Germany now.

“There has been a shift away from science in primary towards educating children in social issues,” he noted.

This contrasts with many countries in Asia but also Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand which have upgraded science teaching at primary level.

In schools, teachers are not surprised at the view that Germany is falling behind in science.

They say traditional science subjects such as physics, chemistry and biology are seen as “uncool” and engineering is regarded as dull by school-leavers.

The German Ministry of Science Education showed, in their latest figures that the number of graduates in engineering, mathematics and sciences dropped by some 20 per cent in the last decade while the numbers opting for arts and humanities at universities had risen by proportionally the same amount.

According to the comparative study of 29 OECD countries released last month, Germany is now producing one third fewer highly trained science and technology graduates than other major industrial nations.

Finland, France, Ireland, Japan and South Korea all have much higher proportions of science and technology graduates, with between 2,220 and 5,200 engineers and other science graduates per 100,000 employees compared to only 1,040 in Germany.

Employers criticise the time it takes to get a first degree, six to seven years in Germany, compared to three or four in most other developing countries. This often means that knowledge becomes outdated by the time graduates enter the job market.

This is particularly the case with information technology where the slow grind of the German higher education system is unable to turn out specialists with skills that are up to date by the time they graduate.

“Typically, a large number of my students are hired while they are still studying and while their skills are still state of the art,” says Michael Kobzan, Lecturer in Computer Graphics at Potsdam Technical College.

“Many of the students do not stay the length of the course.”

Germany was not alone in needing to bridge the gap by importing IT specialists. However, unlike Britain and the United States the Berlin government insists the need to import from overseas is temporary until its own universities produce enough science and IT graduates.

Yet in the midst of the heated debate about the shortage of home-gown information technologists, the Technical University of Berlin has announced a cut in the number of students to be accepted onto computer science courses next term.

Analysts say the lack of IT professors had meant a ceiling on the number of students admitted to such courses.

At the University of Rostock, 650 students are chasing just 130 available places on IT courses, “a disastrous situation,” says IT professor Karl Hantzschmann. Tutorials of 30 students are regarded as “small groups” while lectures are overflowing.

“The university’s plans are a catastrophe,” said Werner Senger, director of the Federal Association for the Information Economy, Telecommunications,, and New Media (BitKom).

Industry experts say the government is failing to grab a unique opportunity to cash in on the new interest among young people in science and restore the country’s international standing in science and technology.

Prenzel believes the decline in science education is now being reversed as studying information technology has emerged as extremely trendy among secondary school pupils. This is borne out by the numbers studying information technology at German universities rising from just under 12,000 in 1995 to over 22,000 now.

The growing popularity of IT could have a trickle down effect on science and maths teaching in schools, believes Prenzel. “We can observe a shift among teachers already,” he said. “Many of them seen it necessary to change the way they teach maths and science to prepare pupils for the IT age.”