Prerequisites for a junior professorship
Junior professorship positions at German universities must be publicly advertised. In some instances, non-university research institutions are also involved. Similar to the process for filling a normal professorship, an appointment panel assembled by the university chooses the best qualified candidates and invites them for an interview and an assessment lecture. For the best candidates, evaluations of personal and professional qualifications will be collected from professors at other universities.
Only a limited amount of time may pass between the moment a candidate earns a doctorate and that person’s application for a junior professorship. In Berlin, for example, that time limit is generally six years, and nine years in the field of medicine. There are no specified age limits for junior professorships in Germany.
To ensure that they are among the most promising candidates, applicants should fulfil the following requirements:
- outstanding doctorate degree
- proven aptitude for scientific work
- teaching experience with proven pedagogical ability
- relevant publications
- in the postdoc phase
- experience in acquiring third-party funding
- academic experience abroad
Contract lengths for junior professors
As a rule, junior professorship contracts initially run for three years, though they may also be for four years. Once that contract comes to an end, the faculty in question performs an evaluation and has the option of extending the junior professorship to a cumulative maximum of six years.
Even for junior professors who are granted an extension, however, there is no guarantee that a tenure-track, full professorship will be forthcoming, particularly given the limited number of such positions. Beyond that, junior professors must have used their six years to obtain the additional qualifications needed for a full professorship. Only a small share of junior professorships in Germany are tenure track positions, which lead to lifetime professorships after a certain probationary period.
Still, according to a 2015 study performed by the Institute for Higher Education Research Halle-Wittenberg in cooperation with the Centre for Higher Education, the future of the junior professorship programme is bright. Accordingly, 85 percent of junior professors were granted full professorships, with two-thirds of them being promoted two or three years before the end of the official six-year term.
The study also found that the remaining 15 percent also ended up with promising positions. Six percent switched to another qualification route, such as earning their habilitation. And the rest ended up working in university or research management after finishing their junior professorships or ended up with jobs in the private sector or as teachers.