Share of Academics Increasing in Research Departments

In the period between 1991 and 1995, German businesses increasingly hired staff with an academic qualification for their departments of research and development, prototype production, construction and design (FEK). On the other hand, laboratory assistants and technicians with an intermediate educational qualification were discharged in those divisions which require a high level of formal education. In total, the number of FEK-employees has been stagnating since 1987. These are the findings of a current study of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, which was designed within the scope of the reports on the technological performance of Germany in 1997 on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Technology.

With an average of 45 per cent, the share of university graduates among all FEK employees is even higher than in the executive board where the share of academics amounts to 37 per cent.  In accountancy and sales departments merely 22 per cent and 7.5 per cent of employees, respectively, have a university degree. The highest ratios of highly qualified staff were found in FEK departments of business-related service providers with 52 per cent and in public research departments with 59 per cent.  The qualification structure is also more likely to change in FEK departments than in other company divisions. For instance, while the share of academically qualified staff in FEK departments of Western German companies had already increased by 1.8 per cent between 1991 and 1992, the ratio in fact further increased by 2.5 per cent between 1993 and 1995. This tendency is even more apparent in Eastern Germany where the share of university graduates in FEK departments went up from 44.8 per cent to 58.8 per cent.

Contact

Gunter Grittmann, Phone: +49(0)621/1235-132, E-mail: grittmann@zew.de