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Economic Autonomy
Compared to other HEI in the German education system the FU has managed to acquire one of the highest external funding of €55 Mio, which is 15,8 % of the overall budget. Per professorship, this sum seems to be fluctuating around 100,000 Euro per year (FU web). Such possibilities for individual entrepreneurial initiatives result in a degree of financial autonomy from the state, and are politically craved, having already been implemented in co-operations with BMW, Schering, Siemens, Deutsche Telekom and Pfizer (FU web), although ultimately, they are the exception.
Website
After the relaunch of the website in 2000, the FU began to receive many positive reviews (FU, 2001, p. 94; (Lederbogen & Trebbe, 2001)) and even reached the first place in a comparison of the websites of all 17 Berlin based higher education institutions (Dowe, 2001) In the International University Website Ranking the FU reaches the first place for German universities and the 82nd internationally, also the 4icu platform ranking of website popularity placed it third.
On the site, contact information is available on a relatively general level for administrative services and almost all Professors do have a personal website.
3.2.8.1. Teaching and Learning
In general a positive trend for the FU can be observed looking at the assessment conducted by CHE (2006). However, in the sampling for this research the Economics and Business education departments received rather mediocre to negative reviews as did the History and Psychology departments. Oddly, the results for the Pharmacy and Chemistry depts. were surprisingly unfavourable. In the sampling undertaken, only the Computer Sciences have managed to rise in the evaluation in three out of the five indicators. It is now part of the top bracket (of leading universities) for: the study situation (elaborate what study situation means?), the student care/consultation, and for IT infrastructure. It holds a middle position regarding reputation with professors and research funding.
The FU’s endeavours in regards to e-learning have been recognized with an overall approval by students, who rate the offering with 2,4 (on a 1 to 6 scale [i]).
3.2.8.2. Research Results
As would be expected the FU’s researchers are publishing in as much as 14 different categories [ii], and have published a sum of more than 16 000 papers. More than 97% of the publications are coming from the non social sciences, with 22% coming out of clinical medicine, 14% in chemistry, and 8% in biology. Overall FU papers have a respectable 11,62 citations per paper [iii]. In the global list of ISI listed institutions the FU reaches the 173 place. On a national level it was rated 9th best research institution (out of 46). Even though that is not as good as in the last ranking, it was able to participate in 14 of the 17 examined disciplines and was assessed to have a strong research capacity in 6 of those. In chemistry research the FU is one of the finest in Germany and it performed best in the securing of external funding among all German universities. FU’s potential is also underlined through its top ranking for dissertations per professor (CHE and FU web).
The FU’s relatively good standing in regards to research is also reflected in the 12th place ranking that analyzed the choice of 4,713 top-flight researchers, who spent time at German universities between 1998 and 2002 (vHumbold, 2003).
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[i] Authors calculations based on CHE 2006 dataset of sampled departments in the last years.
[ii] Of the ISI Essential Science Indicators
[iii] These ISI figures have to be understood to be a very “science biased” indicators for the simple differences that exist in the different disciplines. (E.g. in humanities academics are more likely to publish monographs.)
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