New subject: R: settori

10 Jun 2009


      mando a voi, visto che ho avuto un po di scambi con voi,  la lettera  
di Martin Groetschel  segretario dell IMU  e ben noto matematico, che  
spiega il sistema tedesco, ovvero di una nazione che ha una storia  
accademica  simile alla nostra e un sistema pubblico.
Devo dire che provo solo rabbia quando sento dire che noi non siamo  
ancora pronti per un sistema sensato,  e` veramente sconfortante  
vivere nella universita` italiana, per fortuna sto per andare in  
pensione  claudio procesi
Dear Claudio,
Thanks for your efforts to support the upcoming EC meeting in
Rome using financial sources that you will try to find in your
"academic neighborhood". Concerning your request for scientific
advice on a complicated issue, I can respond as follows.
Germany does not have the Italian "concorsi" which, as I
understand them, are centralized professorship application and
distribution systems. As far as I recall former reports of my
Italian friends, the government announces that there will be a
certain number of professorships, in algebra say, available all
over Italy, then people apply for all these professorships, and a
central committee decides who is going to get these positions,
and then some negotiations start who is getting which algebra
position at which place.
In Germany the hiring is very local. Each individual faculty (for
instance of mathematics) decides about the hiring. In general,
this works as follows. A faculty (or department) has a certain
number of professorships. If a person leaves or retires the faculty
has to re-apply  within the university for the reassignment of
this professorship to the faculty. A part of the reapplication is
to precise the description of the area the professorship should
cover. The faculty may decide to open it for the same subject the
predecessor had, but may also provide arguments for a change of
subject. At TU Berlin, my university, we completely eliminated
"function theory" in the recent years (there were 4 professors
who retired within 10 years) and reassigned these professorships
to mathematical disciplines closer to engineering (such as
Numerics of Partial Differential Equations, Optimization, ..).
Once the Academic Senate of the university has decided to
reallocate the professorship (with a precise definition of the
topic of the chair) then the faculty determines a search
committee which publishes announcements for an open position,
screens the applicants, invites some of them for lectures, and
finally prepares a ranked list of three persons. This list goes to
the department and the faculty for approval and finally to the
Academic Senate. Once the list is approved by all these
institutions, an offer (in Germany called "Ruf"("Call")) is made
to the person placed first on the list. If this person rejects
the offer, second is called, etc.
This shows, that we have a completely decentralized hiring
system. This has the advantage that decisions are made on the
local level where the needs are known better, and the
personalities of persons to be hired need to be known. Sometimes
you are happy with an autistic researcher, and sometimes you need
an organizer or a good teacher, subject to good academic
qualifications, and therefore, I think that the local decision
process is important. Of course, since usually the new colleagues
are not hired by specialists (the new professor should cover an
area not covered by anybody else) mistakes are happening. For
that reason, for such hiring processes the Academic Senate
requires quite a number of evaluation letters from well-known
persons from outside the university, and some of these letters
have to compare the qualifications (with respect to research,
teaching, etc.) of the persons that make it to the final round
(of typically 6 persons), so that the university is (somewhat)
sure not to make a mistake.
In centralized hiring systems, there is more topical expertise
around, but I am not a friend of these systems since these tend
to favour "schools" and do not give good chances to "outsiders".
In former times mathematics was also subdivided in some way.
There was, however, no consistent subdivision of mathematics.
Many faculties simply had Pure Mathematics and Applied
Mathematics groups, but in most cases this subdivision has
been given up and people are happy to run everything just
under "Mathematics".
This is also reflected by recent decision of the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) which is the
main funding agency for research. Until a few years ago, there
was the subdivision of mathematics into Pure Mathematics, Applied
Mathematics, Statistics. Now everything is under one roof, and
only "mathematics" is supported. Mathematicians have to take care
among themselves how the financial support is distributed within
the mathematics community.
I personally find this development very positive. The creation of
walls between the subjects typically creates conflicts and
competition. It is more important to support cooperation. As you
know, I have chaired the DFG Research Center Matheon for six
years, and we have made good experience to also integrate several
pure mathematicians. A key problem is, that people talk to
each other, and I have noticed in the recent years that there are
more number theorists, say, who are interested in really applied
topics then persons in probability theory. Traditionally number
theory was consider pure, while probability was an applied
subject, but all this very much depends on the interests and
personal drives of the individuals working in the subject.
Is this of any help for you? Do you have further questions?
Best regards
Martin
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Re: [Universitas_in_trasformazione] settori