Science. 2012 Nov 2;338(6107):596-9. doi: 10.1126/science.338.6107.596.

Global research universities. Excellence, ja, elitism, non.

Macilwain C.

“The Excellence Initiative has made German universities think more deeply about their strategic futures, and that's a good thing,” says Boulton, a geologist at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom who now heads the Science Policy Advisory Group at the Royal Society of London. Boulton also chairs the Academic Advisory Council at Heidelberg University, which won backing under all three components of the initiative. The selection process administered a “salutary shock” to prestigious German universities that lost out early on, he notes.

The French initiative is more problematic, Boulton says: “For the last 10 or 15 years, French governments have been thrashing around, looking for the ‘magic bullet’ that will bring their universities up to what they regard as international standards.”