The first fundamental ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court on the numerus clausus (BVerfGE 33, 303ff.) demanded the exhaustive use of existing training capacities and a comparable capacity utilisation of universities. As a result, the federal states concluded the first state treaty on the allocation of study places in 1972. This also marked the birth of capacity law as the basis for calculating the number of study places to be provided by state universities. In essence, the annual admission figures are calculated on the basis of staff-dependent teaching capacity and curricular norm values (CNW), which quantify the mathematical teaching effort required to properly educate a student in a subject.
On the one hand, capacity law has thus provided a reliable planning and control instrument for more than 50 years with regard to the provision of study programmes and the allocation of resources. On the other hand, there is persistent criticism of the high cost of the calculations and the underlying input variables. Another argument is that, in times of extended university autonomy, capacity law imposes unnecessary bureaucratic constraints on universities, making it more difficult to raise their profile and develop the quality of their degree programmes.
Against this background, the central objectives of the project are to provide an overview of the design, application and impact of capacity law in general and of bandwidth models instead of fixed CNW in particular. The insights gained are to be reflected in their connection to other subject areas, in particular higher education funding and the development of study quality, and on this basis impulses are to be provided for the further development of capacity law at state and higher education institution level.
To this end, the legal framework (higher education admissions laws, capacity regulations, compulsory teaching regulations) of the different German federal states and practical examples of implementation at universities will be analysed. The financial consequences of various designs are analysed on the basis of model calculations. In addition, central strands of discourse in the field of capacity law are examined with a view to the actors involved and their lines of argumentation, and finally experts at various levels, from ministries, universities and scientific organisations, are questioned in guided interviews on the advantages and disadvantages of model designs, perceived effects and further assessments.
An up-to-date overview of the handling of capacity law in Germany is still lacking and, in particular, the associated strategic considerations and effects on higher education institutions have hardly been investigated. However, the project is not only intended to close a research gap here, but also to work towards knowledge transfer in particular. To this end, people involved in capacity law at universities and ministries will be continuously involved: They will be systematically interviewed and will be the first to receive results from the project in order to reflect on and discuss them in a critical and constructive manner, so that subsequent publications will be directly applicable for practitioners.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) from 01.10.2024 to 30.09.2025 (FKZ 16RBM1020).