How KLU made a name for itself

This article is part of KLU's anniversary magazine celebrating our 10th anniversary (see pages 14-15). Have a look at the whole magazine.

What is the best way to make a new university, and to lead it to excellence? I was convinced that the only way this could work was by quickly gaining reputation. Reputation is what attracts the highest-quality professors and Ph. D. candidates, while the presence of these academics encourages outstanding students to enroll. In addition, Dr. Peiner, KLU’s first president, had let me know that our sponsor, Prof. Dr. h.c. Kühne, didn’t want just another university, but a different kind of university, one that was a breed apart.

how to gain reputation

You gain a reputation by appointing professors with impressive track records, and especially by demonstrating to the state system that you are just as active in research as other universities. To do so, we had to start finding and appointing professors as soon as possible. The first appointments we made would show the world at large what way the university was heading. Accordingly, our first generation of professors had a unique symbolic function—which is why we invested so much effort into recruiting truly excellent staff. Our focus was on finding professors who had completed training at international universities, but who ultimately favored to live in Germany, and particularly Hamburg. Fortunately, nearly all of these initial hires developed extremely well, producing high-quality publications, as a result of which, after only a year, there were talks of awarding KLU the right to grant doctoral degrees on a provisional basis.

The department system

In keeping with the goal of forming a different kind of university, the classification system for professors used internationally – into Assistant, Associate and Full Professors—was adopted. In addition, we agreed on using their respective academic publications as the basis for hiring, classifying and promoting new faculty members, drawing on a ranking system for top international research journals that I devised. The system is still used today, and ensures that KLU professors are and remain motivated to publish in high-caliber journals, throughout their careers.

Also, from the outset we chose not to use the department chair principle traditionally seen at German universities, which tends to produce chair professors with their own little “kingdoms,” which consist of several assistants and engage in little intra-university communication. Instead, acting on my recommendation, KLU introduced the internationally practiced department system, in which professors focus on teaching and don’t have assistants or secretaries of their own. As a result, our professors engage in far more collaboration, and jointly supervise doctoral candidates.

These guidelines helped set an upward spiral in motion, sparking rapid quantitative and qualitative growth, allowing KLU to quickly establish itself and easily gain certification from the Wissenschaftsrat (German Academic Council) and a recommendation for the right to grant doctoral degrees.