BREMEN (dpa) – An elite American-style private university, aimed at securing the world’s most brainy students, will open in this northern German city on September 20, boosted by 230 million German marks (112.5 million dollars) “start-up capital” from the deeply- indebted Bremen city authorities.
The exclusive “International University Bremen” (IUB), located on an ex-army barrack site, has stirred controversy in a region racked by educational funding problems and relatively high unemployment.“Top level students will come to Bremen from all over the world,” enthused the IUB’s founding president, 55-year-old Fritz Schaumann, who says the finishing touches are now being made to the new university college premises.Students arriving next month will take part in three-year courses at the school of humanities and social sciences. The programs will culminate in a bachelor of arts degree.They will also have a choice of majoring in either history, arts and literature, cognitive psychology or integrated social sciences.The college campus premises are named after Alfried Krupp, the once powerful German industrialist convicted for wartime arms production activities. It is the “Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Foundation” which has paid for the construction of most of the college premises.Critics say that Bremen, the smallest of Germany’s 16 federal states, should be pumping money into its own state-run educational facilities, not promoting a “university for the privileged”.But Schaumann, a former state secretary in the German education ministry, rejects such criticism. He says the new private university helps promote “a long overdue change in the German higher education system”.In recent years, a welter of business schools and private colleges have sprouted up in Germany. But not until 1983 was the first bid made at creating a private university at Witten-Herdecke in North Rhine Westphalia.Down the years it has struggled to keep afloat, often needing state cash injections to survive. In Bremen, the IUB believes it can remain viable – with the help of donations from industry and private cash contributors.In May, the IUB “Foundation of America, Inc.” was founded, allowing U.S. donors to make financial contributions to the new German university, and take advantage of U.S. tax deductions at the same time.The IUB’s American project partner is Rice University in Houston, Texas, which is one of America’s top universities. Via its Bremen information resource centre the IUB hopes to gain rapid entry to a broad array of digital information available at Rice.Schaumann says the IUB seeks “excellence” and “internationality” with regard to its student levels and faculty. International degrees, instruction in English, and joint international research and development projects will be on offer.To date, only 130 students, paying 30,000 marks a year tuition, have enrolled at the university, which will start with a teaching body of 30 professors, chosen from 1,600 applicants worldwide.But that figure is expected to double within five years, once the IUB has achieved its goal of 500 million marks of stock capital. Masters and PhD programs are planned for the 2002-2003 academic year, says Professor Dr. Max Kaase, IUB vice-president and dean of the humanities and social sciences faculty.Sensitive to accusations that the University is being set up for the sons and daughters of the rich, Schaumann insists students will come on “merit-based scholarships.”Need-based grants and loans, however, will allow other students entry to the IUB – “regardless of their financial circumstances”,claims Beate Wolff, the IUP’s director of public relations.The university will be fully operative by 2005, but even then its plans provide for 1,200 scholars only – a figure that is way below that of Germany’s state-run universities, which often have student bodies in excess of 30,000.Seventy per cent of the IUP’s first arrivals will be foreigners, coming from countries such as Nepal, Italy, Canada, the United States, France and Bulgaria.In recent years, increasing numbers of young Germans, turned off by the nation’s often crowded universities, have been heading to Britain, France and America to study in more comfort.Henning Scherf, Bremen’s social democrat mayor, says the IUB project deserves initial backing. Asked if he wants to see a fundamental “privatisation” of German universities, Scherf replies: “No, not at all.“But I do believe that having a more colourful university landscape adds to attractiveness. State-run or private is not so important.” Start-up capital provided the IUB had not come from Bremen’s educational budget, Scherf said.“It’s economic development money,” he said. “The IUB is an ambitious project with a science park being set up. It’s likely to entice American investors to Europe who seek young talent to help them in the further development of their ideas.”Seminar buildings, two sports halls, an auditorium, and 28 faculty apartments are now ready for next month’s IUB official opening.
