German funder highlights impact of geopolitics on academia

Dramatic geopolitical shifts are having an impact on higher education and research, in particular the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the common challenges humanity is facing, such as climate change and its dramatic consequences, the growing scarcity of natural resources and the issue of global food security, persist and remain urgent.

The German Academic Exchange Service or Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) states in its latest annual report that 2021 saw a gradual normalisation of student and academic mobility as the coronavirus crisis became less severe. However, it also emphasises the increasing impact of geopolitical developments on academia.

Addressing crises, especially that in Afghanistan, was a focal aspect of last year’s DAAD activities. Various measures, such as the Hilde Domin Programme, were expanded to offer protection to threatened Afghan students and academics. Funded via the Federal Foreign Office, Hilde Domin scholarships are aimed at enabling students and doctoral candidates to complete studies and research in safety in Germany.

However, 2021 also featured a renewed increase in international academic mobility as the COVID-19 crisis ebbed to some extent.

“For Germany, as a place to study in, we are happy to confirm that the number of international students continued to grow in the two years of the pandemic to a level of around 325,000,” DAAD President Joybrato Mukherjee announced in Berlin, presenting the report. “So Germany continues to be a very popular country to study in and comes up fourth after the USA, the UK and Australia.”

Mukherjee maintained that numbers had grown thanks to the considerable efforts on the part of the universities and their student bodies, but also because of a well-conceived German entry policy for international students. For the current year, the DAAD is reckoning with 330,000 to 350,000 students from abroad at German institutions.

“[The year] 2021 also marked the return of academic mobility in the DAAD’s own programmes and the Erasmus programme,” added DAAD Secretary General Kai Sicks.

“The number of all students supported by the DAAD climbed back to around 135,000 last year, which, following the decline in the corona[virus] year of 2020, represents a very welcome increase of 22%. And we are also witnessing considerable growth in virtual exchange, with around 30,000 participants in online formats alone in DAAD-sponsored projects.”

The DAAD supported around 75,000 international students and researchers visiting Germany, representing an increase of 52% compared to 2020, while roughly 34,000 German students received support for stays abroad in the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, with figures reaching 80% of pre-COVID-19 levels.

“As far as Erasmus applications for 2022 are concerned, we are already 20% above the 2019 level, so stays in other EU countries continue to be popular,” Sicks noted.

“We are currently experiencing rapid changes in the overall context of academic exchange worldwide,” Mukherjee said in Berlin.