Graduate Schools: Teaming up for a Doctorate
By Sabine Olschner

The graduate schools at German universities were founded as part of the German Initiative for Excellence, with which the Federal Republic of Germany aims to promote top-flight university research. Each graduate school receives on average one million euros in public funds each year. Graduate schools are centres of exchange: they aim to ensure both that research teams are internationally mixed and that the groups of doctoral candidates are interdisciplinary.

Several faculties will often jointly research an overarching issue. One example is the Göttingen Graduate School of Neurosciences and Molecular Biosciences (GGNB), one of the largest graduate schools in Germany. Six faculties of the University of Göttingen, three Max Planck Institutes and the German Primate Centre conduct, for example, joint research in the fields of brain and behavioural research, biochemistry, biophysics, cell and developmental biology. The doctoral candidates don't just work individually within the research teams, they participate in research projects. "Our approximately 350 doctoral candidates - of whom up to 45 percent are from abroad - are integrated directly into the research groups", emphasises Dr. Steffen Burkhardt, scientific co-ordinator of the GGNB.

Interdisciplinary Graduate Schools

Dr. Martin Zierold, managing director of the Gießen Graduate Centre for Cultural Sciences (GGK), takes a similar view: "We treat our doctoral candidates as researchers and not as learners. That means they can, for example, also attend conferences or publish their research results." The GGK deliberately calls itself Graduate Centre and not Graduate School "because we operate in a less school-like manner than many other providers", explains Martin Zierold. For example, contrary to the usual procedure at many graduate schools, doctoral candidates in Gießen don't earn credit points. The GGK brings together social scientists, historians, teachers, musicologists, literary and linguistic scientists and other researchers from the wide field of civilisation studies, who carry out interdisciplinary research in eight research areas.

Soft skills for scientists

One advantage of inter-faculty collaboration is the networking and the associated exchange of ideas among doctoral candidates and professors. "We already place importance in the application process on whether the candidates have sought to broaden their horizons during their studies and taken an interest in at least a second discipline", explains Dr. Yvonne Ritze, project co-ordinator for teaching in the Cluster of Excellence at the Stuttgart Graduate School of Simulation Technology (GS SimTech). The 37 German Clusters of Excellence are also state-sponsored research and training institutions that co-operate with extramural research institutions, universities of applied sciences and industry.

At GS SimTech, doctoral candidates - mainly from the natural and engineering sciences and the humanities - can also involve themselves in other, cross-disciplinary subjects alongside their own research areas. "We offer, for example, courses on soft skills such as time management or scientific writing", explains Yvonne Ritze. Other graduate schools have similar offerings. "After a year or a year and a half, our doctoral candidates additionally prepare a milestone presentation in which they present their projects to their colleagues." This too is a special feature of graduate schools: in contrast to a traditional PhD, the doctoral candidates are never left to themselves, but integrated into a team and supported - and on the other hand regularly required to present the results of their doctorate.