There are many new faces among cabinet ministers. One of them is the 47-year-old Anja Maria-Antonia Karliczek, who is the new head of the Federal ministry for education and research (BMBF).  An active member of the CDU for the past 20 years, she was mainly active in local politics until she became a member of the Bundestag in 2013. Ms Karliczek holds a degree in business studies. In her parliamentary work so far, she has concentrated on economic policy and SMEs, on family-related issues and on developing models for a better work-life balance. She has no track record in education and research issues.

The coalition agreement between the CDU, its Bavarian sister CSU and the SPD, which together form the new government, was welcomed by Horst Hippler, the President of Germany’s rectors conference (HRK), and indeed it sounds promising for the relative centrality of higher education and research and the level of federal funding allocated to it. This is another step forward, after the softening of the controversial “cooperation ban”, which in the past has made it very difficult to create synergies between federal and regional funding, leading to the nonsense that the federal government was not allowed to co-fund state or university-led projects. The new agreement raises high hopes that this paradox will soon be put an end to, thanks to a growing involvement of the federal government in the funding of universities, for the students’ good sake. However, higher education and research will continue to be an exclusive competence of the Länder, which will continue to bear the biggest share of the costs of the HE, connected to the administration.