1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
Education

Our Studio Guest:

July 28, 2014

Simone Burkhart, from the DAAD - German Academic Exchange Service

https://p.dw.com/p/1CjA6

DW: Simone Burkhart, integration sometimes seems to fail. Can you understand why?

Simone Burkhart: What we have seen is that scientists and students feel well-integrated at universities because they are very welcoming to their students. They have welcome-centres and they speak English. But what we observe are the problems in everyday life. How ordinary people react to foreign people.

But Germans usually don't have problems with people from abroad, do they?

No, usually they don't. But sometimes they maybe seem a bit cold and not so easy to speak to. That might give the students the feeling that they are not welcome, which actually might not be the case.

So we should improve our welcoming culture in Germany and start to hug people that come into the country.

Maybe we should just invite them into our houses.

You participated in the actual report on academic exchange and student mobility. It's called "science worldwide open". Is it the normal situation, that scientists usually leave after a few years in Germany?

We don't have good figures for scientists. A lot of them stay, some go, but we don't find that this is a problem, because what we want to enable is cooperation. Actually we find it good if scientists come and go because then we will have an exchange. But we have quite good figures for foreign students, and we know that half of the foreign students actually stay after they finish their studies in Germany.

I read in your report that about one third of all German students going for some time for their studies abroad. That seems like a low number, isn't it?

Actually it's not. If you compare that to other countries, for example the US, Great Britain or other western countries, the number is quite high. But still we want to improve that. Our goal - and also the goal of our government - is to raise this figure so that every second German student goes abroad.

It's understandable that all the countries are actually competing for the best heads in science. Germany seems to be on the good side in this game, but poorer countries might not be able to keep up with the situation, lose heads and also might lose their future by this. How can you deal with this problem?

Yes, that is a problem, especially for poor countries, for example in Africa. We try to turn the situation of brain drain into a situation of brain circulation, which means that scientists from abroad keep in touch with their country. And what we do with our scholarship programs for students and researchers from developing countries is, that our programs are designed that these people eventually go back.

Interview: Ingolf Baur