The German higher education and research landscape is currently engaged in intensive discussions on reforms and structural adjustments in the area of staffing and organisational structures. One factor underlying these discussions is the practice of fixed-term employment and contracts in the German research system, which, in the view of many stakeholders, makes it necessary to develop innovative staffing structures. Alongside employment conditions and staff development strategies, attention is therefore also turning to both academic job profiles and research-related job profiles that are not geared towards academic qualification. The staffing structure model presented by the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) for discussion in 2025, which differentiates between four categories of positions (S1 to S4), provides an important impetus in this regard. However, there is still no systematic assessment of the orientation, implementation and effects of ongoing reforms aimed at shaping staffing structures and staff recruitment.
At the same time, higher education institutions and higher education policymakers have a considerable, but as yet insufficiently met, need for information about the possibilities of establishing such positions as permanent posts. To date, there are no systematically collected empirical findings on innovative organisational and staffing structures for permanent posts. Instead, the debate has largely been shaped by proposed models; one recurring demand has been the introduction of departmental structures. The project "Permanent Academic Positions at Higher Education Institutions: Profiles, Selection Procedures, Staffing and Organisational Structures in Transition (AkaDa)" aims to address this gap in knowledge. At the same time, it seeks to identify pathways and framework conditions that can support the implementation of the German Council of Science and Humanities’ recommendations in ways tailored to the needs of individual higher education institutions.This includes, among other things, studies examining the selection of professors. Topics in this context include, for example, differentiated selection criteria at universities and universities of applied sciences, career paths towards a permanent professorship, selection factors in individual disciplines, the significance of gender differences, and the relevance of social background. These aspects are representative of a diverse body of research and findings that can be drawn on, in adapted form, to address the questions pursued by the AkaDa project.
Against this background, AkaDa examines permanent positions alongside and below the professorial level. In particular, this refers to open-ended academic and research-related employment relationships that enable permanent roles at higher education institutions without being geared towards a permanent professorship. The aim of the exploratory AkaDa study is to generate insights into the current state of development, as well as the establishment, planning and filling of permanent academic positions, their prevalence, and their integration into staffing and organisational structures. More specifically, the project addresses four central research questions:
- How has the proportion of academic and research-related positions at publicly funded higher education institutions in Germany that, according to the German Council of Science and Humanities’ classification, are to be understood as permanent positions developed quantitatively?
- What innovative or novel approaches to permanent positions can be identified in institution-specific staffing concepts and organisational structures, and how is a distinction made between permanent institutional tasks and qualification-related tasks?
- How are both criteria-based and competitive selection procedures for permanent academic positions specifically structured?
- How are permanent tasks assigned to permanent positions in practice?
These questions are addressed through case studies at selected higher education institutions.
