Tenure Track in Germany
The path to a tenured professorship in Germany has often been criticized as extraordinarily difficult, leaving candidates in insecure fixed-term positions until a relatively high age, which has made such positions unattractive for many excellent scientists and scholars. In recent years, the so-called ‘tenure track professorship’ was introduced as a way to enhance the predictability of this career path at an earlier stage. For young researchers, such a professorship includes a promise from the outset that if they successfully complete a probationary period of up to six years, they will be employed in a permanent tenured position.
Although initial steps toward this reform were taken as early as 2002, it was not until a government program promoting the tenure track was adopted in 2016 that the direct path to a tenured professorship gained significant importance. According to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in the two rounds of the so-called “1000-Professorships Program” conducted in 2017 and 2019, 1,000 tenure track assistant professorships at 75 universities will be funded until 2032. As a result, more than one-third of assistant professorships are expected to be offered with a tenure track by 2022.
The chances of obtaining a tenure-track assistant professorship are thus increasingly good. However, the number of available positions depends heavily on the federal state, the university and the respective department.