Once the candidate has sent in their salary and Ausstattung request, a meeting with the administration will be set up.
First, a little about how the administration is structured in German universities (at least the ones we have experience with). At the top is the Rektor (roughly speaking, the President). Unlike in an American university, where the president is mostly involved with fundraising, a Rektor will also be involved with the actual running of the school. Within the Rektorat are vice-presidents (“Prorektor“), which assume some of the administrative responsibilities.
After that, within the Rektorat is the Kanzler, who is responsible for the budget and the day-to-day running of the school (sort of like a provost in the U.S., but not necesarily a professor).
From there, each university is divided up into different faculties, which are not standard. For example, at Uni-Bonn, the economics department is located in the faculty of law and economics. At Uni-Köln, the economics department is in the social science faculty (which is more common). At the top of each faculty is a Dekan (Dean), who is the administrative head of the faculty. They are not like American deans, however, in that they have no role in setting salaries, and are always drawn from within the faculty, rather than from outside. Dekans also have a somewhat reduced teaching load, but are not ful-time administrators in the way that deans are in the U.S. There is a great wariness in Germany of “professional deans” (by which I think they mean full-time).
The negotiations take place in two parts. The first discussion regards the Ausstattung. In the US, this might be a relatively minor part of the discussion (at least in history and economics — we are sure that it is extremely important in the hard sciences). But in Germany, because each Lehrstuhl carries its own workforce with it (post-docs and secretary), bargaining over these positions and the startup funds is much more important. This discussion takes place with the Kanzler and the Dekan. One’s request is in the form of computers, furniture, books, etc., but in the end the startup package is just a sum of money, that is totally fungible between different uses.
The second part of the discussion takes place only with the Kanzler or another represenative of the Rektorat (a Prorektor, for example), and this is about salary. Salary is divided into two pieces: a base salary that varies (a little) by Land and more by level (W2, or roughly associate professor or W3, roughly full professor). The base salary or Grundgehalt is perhaps comparable to a mid-term humanities professor’s salary in the U.S. at each level. After that, one has to bargain for additions on the basis of one’s current salary. Usually some of this additional pay will be predicated on meeting certain goals for publishing or conference acceptances. Overall, German salaries are not comparable to those in economics in the US, but are probably about as good in history. In our limited experience, German universities take as their reference point only other offers within Germany — offers in other countries are valued less. It’s not exactly clear to us why this is (except , perhaps, for German arrogance), and is certainly something that will have to change if German universities want to be internationally competitive.
After the meeting (at which the University may or may not make a concrete counteroffer), one has to wait for some period of time to get everything that was discussed in writing. Once that happens, the process iterates (without the face-to-face meeting) until convergence.
After everything is agreed to, one then still has to have an “Ernennung” — a small ceremony where a lot of papers are signed and where one receives an “Urkunde” for one’s professorship. It is much more formal than the typical one-page letter one gets in the US and in which there is more or less just a verbal agreement… even for a tenured position.
We are fortunate that we were able to negotiate two jobs at two different German universities, although it came not without certain difficulties. Overall, the German system seems ill-equipped to deal with spousal hires (even to the extent that some folks think it is corrupt for a university to offer a spouse a position). German academia is extremely sexist (reflecting, perhaps, the society in general), and this causes a lot of resistance to hiring couples in certain quarters. This, too, will have to change in the future.
–dj
