Navigation and service

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports projects for research on higher education and science, in the framework of a separate funding priority established especially for this purpose.

The research field in question focuses on an area of society that, over the past few decades, has been steadily gaining economic and macrosocial importance. It is an area in which both non-university research institutions and universities have been making significant contributions to technical innovations and economic growth, to the integration of sustainability concepts and instruments, and to rising levels of education in the general population. In today's world, many products and services, and many of the decisions made by organisations and individuals, are based on knowledge that is science-based and imparted via tertiary education (cf. Wissenschaftsrat (German Council of Science and Humanities), Position Paper 2014). Consequently, excellent research on higher education and science, inspired by theory and using empirical research methods, plays an indispensable role in ensuring the availability of the valid information and analyses needed for policy-making and management in the science sector.

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supports projects for research on higher education and science within the framework of the funding priority "Science and Higher Education Research". The BMBF provides more than 13 million euros annually for this purpose. Funding is primarily provided for R&D projects that can be submitted within the framework of regularly published and topic-specific funding guidelines.

Since the establishment of this funding priority, four funding lines have already been completed. At present, support is being provided for projects in the funding lines presented here. 

Technical innovations, services, but also decisions of organisations and individuals are based to a large extent on scientific knowledge, which is often conveyed through tertiary education. This increases the overall social significance of research and teaching and their best possible design, which should be based equally on scientific knowledge.

As in all other fields of research, knowledge transfer is an important cross-sectional task in research on higher education and science (WiHo). For this reason, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) also supports the exchange between science and practice in the WiHo-funding priority. The aim is to transfer findings on the prerequisites, structures and performance processes of scientific research and tertiary education into higher education and research practice and to implement them in a sustainable manner.

Wie in allen anderen Forschungsfeldern ist der Erkenntnistransfer auch in der Wissenschafts- und Hochschulforschung (WiHo) eine wichtige Querschnittsaufgabe. Daher unterstützt das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) auch im Förderschwerpunkt WiHo mit einer Transferförderung den Austausch zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis. Es sollen so Erkenntnisse zu den Voraussetzungen, Strukturen und Leistungsprozessen von Forschung und tertiärer Bildung in die Hochschul- und Forschungspraxis überführt und nachhaltig implementiert werden.

This is a geographical representation of all projects currently funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.