Publikationen

A brief commentary on the situation of university funding at the beginning of 2026

Records are often approached positivistically, read as evidence of the information they contain; this applies both in an everyday context and in a scientific approach to records as data material. This qualitative interview study contributes to the epistemological reflection of records. Against the background of the analytical approach to records as artefacts, these are understood in terms of how they came into being. Using the example of records of appointment procedures for professorships at German universities, the study examines the question of which functions the records fulfil and how they are produced based on seminarrative expert interviews.

The financing of higher education in Germany involves a complex network of actors and institutions from the private and public sectors. Determining who contributes what to the financing requires considerable research and data processing as part of an in-depth structural analysis. Such an analysis for the year 2023 shows that the private and public sectors in Germany spent a total of around ¤59.806 billion on higher education (excluding research).