What is the effect of the growing grant culture on German academia?
I think it is dramatically altering German academia. The quality of scholarship is perhaps of lesser importance today than in the past. The number of conferences and research collectives one participates in and the amount of grant money one can bring to a university is of increasing importance in determining the career prospects of German academics. In some ways, the culture of the natural sciences has influenced the history profession. Professors don’t have as personal or involved a connection with their graduate students these days, I think, and they tend to interact with them more in the way a principle investigator may relate to the research students in his lab. I might be slightly overstating the phenomenon, but the trajectory is clear. How are students affected? This adaptation of structures from the natural sciences into the humanities and social sciences has many results. Constructing research clusters of researchers around a common theme is a new trend. The idea of one-mind-on
