Following the Top Management Programme international week in Berlin, Klaus-Dieter Rossade shares personal reflections on cross-cultural differences and common themes in higher education.
Advance HE’s Top Management Programme (TMP) cohort 55’s international week in Berlin was always going to be personal for me. How could it not: German born, studied in Freiburg in the 1980s, followed by PhD research into aspects of higher education while developing my academic career in the UK at University College London and then The Open University. Now, with over 30 years of HE and leadership experience in the UK, TMP takes me back to Germany.
Two colleagues with senior UK-Germany HE leadership experience prepared us for the experience: Karla Pollman, president of Tübingen University after senior leadership roles in Bristol and Reading, and I were born just 50km from each other. I first met Petra Wend, Chair of Council at Hamburg University, previously Vice Chancellor of Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh at a London German Saturday School that both our children were attending. Small world.
Leading through power and status complexity
Germany’s HE system is complex, if not complicated: tertiary education powers are largely devolved to the 16 states, with some federal powers concerning national and legislative interests, including incentivisation such as the excellence university awards with associated financial and reputational benefits. Within institutions, full professors, appointed for life, continue to hold powers they have had for decades if not centuries. How, we wondered, do Germans ever get to change and what is the role of VCs and executive leadership teams in this?
We met eight institutions in Berlin and Brandenburg, including traditional universities from the early 19th century, new universities from the 1960s, world leading specialist providers, and universities of applied sciences with stronger vocational orientations and links to employers. We met politicians from the German-UK all-party parliamentary group (who prefer the name ‘friendship group’) and organisations such as the Berlin University Alliance and a Russell-type U15 alliance who lobby on behalf of their members. This feels familiar, the difference must be in the details.
Funding higher education
We suspected that funding would be an issue in Germany as well and our visits confirmed that. But then we remembered that UK funding shortages are triggered by the declining value of student fees in England and Wales, and a sharp decline in international student numbers.
Germany had lifted a federal ban on university fees in 2005 and seven states introduced comparatively modest fees, typically at 1000€ a year, only to abolish them again in 2014 as they proved to be a vote looser. German society continues to see higher education as a public good, a vehicle for social mobility and, crucially, a collective economic good. Perhaps even more surprising, of the not inconsiderable number of international students who also don’t pay fees (though it was considered at one time), about 30% seem to stay on and they are welcome to do so. I got the impression the more global talent deciding to stay, the better but I am speculating. At any rate, it seems that the benefit from a highly trained international workforce is not lost on German HE policy makers, and quite a contrast to UK narratives around international students and migration.
Leading change
All our German hosts talked positively about major institutional change initiatives – change had been slow perhaps, and still ongoing, but generally successful. How can that be? Never mind the complexity of power relationships, state level, federal, professoriate – change seems possible after all. What seems to matter more was that you need leaders with compelling visions, ready to engage, negotiate and co-create across internal and external stakeholders and win over sufficient people to follow the new course.
One First Vice-President we spoke to was known to be a “master of consensus building”. In the UK, VCs may well have more powers to terminate contracts and make sweeping structural changes but to achieve lasting change, the ability to manufacture consensus is a vital ingredient here, too.
Disruptive and transformational professors
As for the almost untouchable status of professors that can work both ways: obstacle, grit in the system, yes, or a force for progressive and transformational change: most of the professors I studied with at Freiburg University had revolutionised their teaching practice in the 70s, inspired by the ideological and pedagogical reform agendas of the 60s. Their work became known as Kritische Lehrveranstaltungen, critical teaching events: teaching content and delivery was co-created with students who had real agency; no exams and certificates of completion instead of marks; no traditional lectures, but seminars prepared by a group of students who presented and led the event; no term essays (Hausarbeiten) but student authored session minutes shared with all; all in all a community of learning and practice.
Today, we would use terms like personalised learning, critical graduate skills, meaningful assessment and academic citizenship – the things we want for our students today, only ‘invented’ four decades earlier. These professors, who have guided my own teaching and leadership ever since, did this in opposition to the traditional standards. They used their powers to disrupt.
TMP community
There is always a social side to week-long residential events, especially in Berlin, with all its iconic historic sites and unlimited hospitality options. Berlin clearly is a city that doesn’t sleep…I used to go along with this. Sadly, no more, but the joy of daytime with my TMP55 community will remain.
Klaus-Dieter Rossade is Executive Dean for the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at the Open University and executive sponsor for several learning and assessment change programmes and for sustainability across the University.
Applications for TMP HE 56 are now open
Deadline for applications is Friday 1 May 2026. Programme begins 19 June 2026. Find out more.
