Dr. Johanna Witte

In the recent years, not only Germany, but also its neighbouring countries Austria and the Netherlands have introduced tenure-track professorships at universities, following the US-American role model. While they have struggled with similar challenges, were subject to similar driving forces and are in competition with each other for young academic talents, there has been surprisingly little interchange and mutual orientation between the higher education systems when introducing the reforms.
This lecture will present key features of tenure track professorships in the three systems, putting them in the context of the different, inherited academic career structures and the degree of institutional autonomy. It will highlight the differences as well as the common driving forces, challenges and perspectives. The results are also relevant against the background of the discussion on the low degree of permanent employment of academic staff in German higher education.
The underlying international comparative study was undertaken as a contribution to the newly published national report on early career researchers in Germany (BuWiK) 2025 and has so far been published in German language only. It is part of a study undertaken jointly by a team of researchers from the Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung (DZHW) and the Bavarian State Institute for Higher Education Research and Planning (IHF), see 'Etablierung des Karrierewegs der Tenure-Track-Professur im deutschen Wissenschaftssystem', chapter 8.

Johanna Witte is visiting researcher at the Professorship of Higher Education (HdHf) of the Center for Higher Education (zhb) at TU Dortmund University. As an external expert in the Tertiary Education Committee of the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat), she is involved in the development of recommendations for future personnel structures in the German higher education and science system. She was senior researcher at the Bavarian State Institute for Higher Education Research and Planning (IHF) for 17 years, being involved in and leading various research projects. Since the beginning of 2023, she was also managing editor of the journal 'Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung'. Prior to her time at the IHF, she worked at the CHE Centre for Higher Education Development. Johanna Witte has carried out several large commissioned studies for national and international organizations. She is active as a reviewer for several high-ranked journals in the area of higher education and sociology and has given press interviews and has conducted background discussion for various German news outlets.