All different? All equal? differentiation of universities' mission statements and excellence initiatives in Germany

摘要

German universities have traditionally been characterized as homogenous. However, recent policies such as the excellence initiative were supposed to introduce differentiation and incentivize universities to develop more specific missions. This study analyzes the mission statements of German universities using a quantitative content analysis. It focuses on the question, whether the mission statements of German universities can be clustered in different groups and if so, whether the membership in one of these groups correlates with a university's success in one of the initiatives or other organizational characteristics. The results show that German universities today have somewhat differentiated mission statements focusing either on research or education. Additionally, half of the universities created significantly longer mission statements with more diverse profiles. However, the characteristics of a university's mission statement are found not to be related to the university's success in the excellence initiative, the Competition for Teaching Excellence or the type of institution. Key words: mission statements, Germany, excellence initiative, universities, institutional theory, computer-assisted text analysis.