Most comprehensive compendium on public funding of research in Germany/ Anniversary edition with current and long-term statistics on third-party and basic funding

Together with the German Rectors' Conference and Stifterverband, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) presented its “Funding Atlas 2024” in Berlin on Monday, 25 November 2024. The most comprehensive set of figures on public research funding in Germany, the Funding Atlas has been published every three years since 1997 by the DFG – the country’s largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation for science and the humanities. The latest edition covers the years 2020 to 2022. 

At the presentation, the President of the DFG, Professor Dr. Katja Becker, emphasised the importance of the Funding Atlas as a “source of information and a decision-making aid in connection with current debate in the field of research policy”. Becker noted that this was already evident in its depiction of the overall development of university funding as well as the relationship between current state basic funding and the third-party funding that universities acquire in competition and on a project-specific, time-limited basis:

for both funding types, the new Funding Atlas shows an increase for the 2022 reporting year compared to the 2019 reporting year covered by the previous Funding Atlas. In 2022, German universities received a total of around €26.7 billion in basic funding, €3 billion more than in 2019 – an increase of 12.9 percent. A total of €10.4 billion in third-party funding was allocated to universities in 2022, an increase of €1.7 billion or 19.1 percent compared to 2019.

“But this increase is not enough in either area to meet the considerable and ever-increasing demands on universities’ performance capacity as they compete internationally, neither can it compensate for additional burdens such as the recent high wage increases,” said Becker, noting that the figures included the annual 3 percent increase in funding from the DFG and other major research organisations based on the Pact for Research and Innovation.

Becker also said it was a problem that, for the first time in almost ten years, third-party university funding had again increased more significantly than basic funding, and that the so-called third-party funding rate had risen from 26.9 to 28 percent. “Third-party funding is very important to universities as an additional source of finance, in particular when it comes to developing their profile at the local, regional, national and international level. But universities are highly dependent on adequate basic funding to ensure performance and competitiveness, as well as for the development of science and research as a whole,” said Becker.

Further increase in federal government share of third-party funding, while industry share decreases once again

In addition to the shifts in basic and third-party funding, the new Funding Atlas also shows changes in the sources of third-party funding. Here, the federal government has continued to significantly increase its third-party funding activities – another factor contributing significantly to the overall increase in the third-party funding rate. With a share of 31.4 percent, the federal government was the largest source of third-party funding for the first time in 2022; the figure was 29 percent in 2019. The share of funding provided by the DFG was 30.3 percent in 2022, compared to 31.5 percent three years earlier. “Developments on the federal government side certainly have to be closely monitored, as is clear not only – but perhaps additionally – in light of the current overall political situation,” said the DFG President.

The share of industry in the financing of universities continued to see a significant decline: the figure here was only 14.7 per cent in 2022. By way of comparison: in 2019, universities received 17.4 percent from industry, while in 2006 the figure was as high as 26 percent. “Business and industry are of vital importance to the transfer of research results from knowledge-driven research to practical application – and they benefit greatly from it. As such, this ongoing, long-term decline in third-party funding from industry is a very worrying development,” said Becker, adding: “Research and industry have the potential to be strong partners: this is something we must pursue in terms of ensuring growth and prosperity and therefore the future viability of our country.”

Long-term statistics as a contribution to current debate

The current Funding Atlas is the tenth edition of the report: having been published ever since data was first collected for the years 1991 to 1995, it is now able to look back on a development of more than 30 years. This anniversary was also highlighted at the presentation in Berlin. “The Funding Atlas is a rather unusual success story. What began as a suggestion from certain major universities to the DFG and as a pure DFG funding ranking has since been continuously expanded and now features several tens of thousands of data points from all major public research funding bodies at national and European level. Nowhere else is it possible to find such comprehensive and differentiated key figures and analyses on the public funding of universities in Germany and the resulting effects,” said the DFG President. 

The tenth edition marks the anniversary of the Funding Atlas by tracing its development and focusing on individual topics over more extended periods of time. “These long-term statistics are relevant to current debate in the area of research policy, too,” said Becker, referring to the recent growing critique of overheated competition in research: “It is sometimes assumed that successful universities are becoming even more successful and that the gap between them and less successful institutions is widening. But there is no evidence of a “Matthew effect” of this kind or the growing inequality it would suggest. On the contrary: in the most recent reporting period, the universities with the most funding received a lower percentage of DFG third-party funding than 30 years ago. This shows how the Funding Atlas can also promote greater objectivity in debate.” 

Focus on international cooperation

A second focus of the latest Funding Atlas is the internationalisation of publicly funded research. “More than in previous years, there is an ambivalent development to be seen here,” said Becker: “A clear picture emerges of the international competitiveness and appeal of German universities, but there is also an indication of how much science and research are now linked to political events and other global challenges, with some instances of productive cooperation being affected as a result.”

For example, said Becker, international competitiveness was reflected in the leading role of German universities in Horizon Europe, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021/22 with over €4 billion in funding, ahead of France with €2.8 billion and Spain with €2.7 billion) and the funding provided by the European Research Council (515 funding recipients – ahead of France with 308 and the Netherlands with 254 funding recipients). Further examples are the high international share of planned collaborations in funding proposals submitted to the DFG (around 20 percent) and the researchers involved in large-scale research collaborations such as Research Training Groups, Collaborative Research Centres and Clusters of Excellence who were previously working abroad and then came to Germany (also around 20 percent). 

There is evidence that international scientific cooperation is increasingly affected by political or other global challenges, such as when the United Kingdom initially dropped out of EU research funding altogether after Brexit, having previously ranked second after Germany. Due to China’s strict isolationist policy in the coronavirus pandemic, there was a considerable drop in the number of planned Sino-German collaborations in DFG projects, while planned collaborations with Russia came to a complete halt due to the DFG’s freeze on cooperation after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Rankings: DFG funding approvals by university, subject, region and country

The new Funding Atlas also contains numerous funding ranking lists that show a high degree of continuity overall for 2020 to 2022, though there are some changes, too. 

The list of the 40 universities with the highest levels of funding continues to be led by the two Munich universities, LMU Munich once again being in first place with €335 million in DFG third-party funding – LMU also has the most consistent top rankings over the entire 30-year reporting period – followed by TU Munich with €333 million. With RWTH Aachen (€325 million) in third place and the University of Heidelberg (€308 million) in fourth, these latter two have swapped places compared to the 2017–2019 period, with the FU Berlin (€270 million) now in fifth place. The University of Bonn made a significant leap forward from 15th to sixth place (€294 million). The top 10 list is completed by the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (€289 million), which improved by three places, the Universities of Freiburg (€288 million) and Tübingen (€286 million), and the University of Hamburg (€271 million), which climbed from 13th place to 10th place.

Broken down by scientific discipline, FU Berlin and HU Berlin raised the most funds in the humanities and social sciences, followed by the University of Tübingen, the University of Hamburg and LMU Munich. In the life sciences, LMU Munich, the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg, TU Munich and the University of Göttingen were in the lead, while in the natural sciences the leaders were the University of Heidelberg, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), TU Munich, the University of Mainz and LMU Munich. In the engineering sciences, most DFG funding went to RWTH Aachen, followed by the University of Stuttgart, TU Dresden, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and KIT in Karlsruhe.

In terms of the amount of funding acquired in relation to the number of professors and their research profile, the universities of Freiburg and Konstanz received the highest level of DFG funding, proving particularly successful with their subject-specific focus. In total, 27 universities raised more third-party funding than their size and subject profile by faculty would have suggested. 

The same picture emerged for third-party funding by federal state for 2020 to 2022, particularly among the top positions, as in the figures collected for the first time for 2017 to 2019. Once again, the largest amount of DFG funding went to North Rhine-Westphalia (€2.13 billion), followed by Baden-Württemberg (€1.69 billion) and Bavaria (€1.57 billion). These were again followed by Berlin (€922 million), Lower Saxony (€899 million), Hesse (€676 million) and Saxony (€616 million). The latter are followed by Hamburg (€365 million), Rhineland-Palatinate (€336 million), Thuringia (€252 million), Schleswig-Holstein (€244 million), Saxony-Anhalt (€170 million), Bremen (€163 million), Brandenburg (€156 million), Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (€109 million) and Saarland (€90 million).

The total number of universities that were able to acquire DFG third-party funding continued to increase, from 225 in the period from 2017 to 2019 to the current figure of 229. These include exactly 100 universities of applied sciences (UAS), of which Aalen University, HM Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences and Furtwangen University received the most funding. All in all, approximately 0.7 percent of DFG funding went to universities of applied sciences in the reporting period 2020 to 2022. “This was even before our newly developed measures to provide more funding for knowledge-driven research at universities of applied sciences was able to take full effect,” said Katja Becker: ‘Thanks to these measures we have now achieved the politically agreed target of 1 percent.” 

The Funding Atlas as a service – current testimonials – new online presence

At the presentation, the Secretary General of the DFG, Dr. Heide Ahrens, emphasised the importance of the Funding Atlas as a tool that served a number of target groups. “Over the years, the Funding Atlas has developed into a key planning tool, particularly for the member organisations of the DFG and the German Rectors‘ Conference, but also for research policy in general,” said Ahrens, referring to a series of testimonials that the DFG has compiled for the anniversary edition. In the latter, users report on how the Funding Atlas and the figures it contains benefit their work. These users include federal and state ministries responsible for higher education and research, senior management at universities, research institutes and research organisations, research officers working at the operational level, and representatives of higher education and research. A selection of testimonials was also published for the presentation of the Funding Atlas; the complete set of statements submitted can be found on the Funding Atlas website. 

As Ahrens further emphasised, one important factor here is that the key figures compiled in the Funding Atlas are based on data collected from the respective funding institutions – not from the institutions that are in receipt of the funding: “This should also be seen as part of the service offered by the Funding Atlas: the institutions covered in the report are spared having to carry out the kind of resource-intensive internal surveys and complex preparation work that is frequently required for other rankings.

A review of past editions shows that there are close links between the four research policy topics of ‘competition’, ‘profile development’, ‘regional/national cooperation and networking’, and ‘internationalisation’. In summary, the funding data clearly has great potential for a wide range of analyses that go beyond pure third-party funding rankings,” said Ahrens, adding that the DFG would continue to draw on this potential in the future to shed light on new issues and insights based on the statistics.

At the presentation in Berlin, Ahrens also noted the extensive information provided on the Funding Atlas website, which has been thoroughly revised for the anniversary. The website now makes it even easier for users to find detailed descriptions and key figures for individual universities and research institutions. Improved and additional search functions now also mean that keywords can be used to display all the relevant data at a glance. All tables and figures are interactive, so they can be used for a specific purpose as required.

Like all editions since 2003, the new Funding Atlas was produced with the financial support of Stifterverband. In addition to the German edition, an English-language summary is to be published in the first half of 2025.

Further Information

Media contact:

• Marco Finetti, Head of Press and Public Relations at the DFG, Tel. +49 228 885-2230, marco.finetti@dfg.de

Specialist contacts at the DFG Head Office:

• Dr. Jürgen Güdler, Head of Information Management, Tel. +49 228 885-2649, juergen.guedler@dfg.de
• Christian Fischer, Project Manager Funding Atlas, Tel. +49 228 885-2589, christian.fischer@dfg.de

For the complete Funding Atlas 2024, the testimonials and further materials, see: www.dfg.de/foerderatlas

A print edition is available entitled Förderatlas 2024 – Kennzahlen zur öffentlich finanzierten Forschung in Deutschland, published by the DFG, Bonn 2024, 168 pages. Working and review copies can be requested by sending an e-mail to presse@dfg.de.