Excellence strategy – authoritarian to success

When in 2009 as part of the educational strike nationwide, people went to the streets against Bologna reform and the neoliberal redesign of the universities, Dieter Lenzen came to Hamburg. There he was elected President of the University in November to make this – contrary to the intention of the “yesterday” protesters, as the then Federal Minister of Science Annette Schavan described the education strike – for the new competitive conditions. As »Mr. Excellence «Lenzen was already titled the» Time «at the time.

In fact, the universities were under new pressure: they were able to secure mousers and lush third -party funds at excellence locations – or to gradually neglect and fall victim to the dawning oysterness of the upcoming budget cuts. Because the strategy of science promotion was roughly behind the Excellence Initiative, which had recently become a new round.

The new world of competition also affected the students who should now study more effectively and professionally with modularized courses and comparable degrees. In his book “Education instead of Bologna!” From 2014, Mr. Excellency complained that the content and humanistic educational ideals necessarily suffered from this.

But Lenzen had by no means become the Allies of the protest students. From the beginning, his plea for “Education” breathed conservative cultural pessimism. He scourged the “learning factories” and meant the democratic mass university, not the attribution through competition and austerity. His plea for the “classic university tradition” also included the elite character.

Therefore, Lenzen has remained absolutely loyal if he is now again in the guest post “The” FAZ “recommends how” success in the excellence slowdown “can be achieved: authoritarian. Unpleasant committees of university self -government are only a hindrance to the necessary steps of successful leadership. “In the case of stubborn resistances, a president (…) will also play bodies against each other” – of course only if the previous “inclusion” has not led to the desired result.

In a world in which anti -democratic forces with “reducing bureaucracy”, “disruption” and libertarian ventures have long since tone, an “educational expert” is hardly noticeable. And yet his figure shows quite well how conservatism over democracy contempt and unleashed competition beats the bridge to authoritarian forces.