The E Is Back – Our Funding Is Not
From June 23 to 29, 2025, Freie Universität Berlin organized an awareness campaign against the budget cuts proposed by the Berlin Senate. During the campaign, the university cut the letter e out of official communication as a symbol of the drastic effects that these budget cuts will have on public institutions.
Why was the campaign necessary?
According to the Berlin Senate’s current proposed budget, Freie Universität will lose around 37 million euros in funding. Overall the Senate plans to slash 250 million euros in funding for research and tertiary education in Berlin in 2025. These cuts will have dire consequences for these institutions and the implementation of their long-term goals.
The fight is not over
The awareness campaign is over, but the university’s dedication to fighting these budget cuts is not. Students, staff members, and researchers will continue to voice their objections to the proposed cuts and the threat they pose to science and education. They are dedicated to raising awareness of the greater costs for the entire university that the Senate’s saving measures entail.
Berlin Senate Imposes Severe Budget Cuts
Last year, the Berlin Senate unveiled plans to strike 250 million euros from the city’s tertiary education, research, and science budget in 2025. While the precise nature of these cuts has yet to be confirmed, it is expected that state universities will face a deficit of more than 100 million euros. The cuts that have been planned for 2025 and the manner in which further cuts will be integrated into the budgets for upcoming years pose considerable challenges for Berlin’s universities. They also endanger Berlin’s reputation as a hub for research and science in the long term.
Freie Universität Berlin is heavily affected by these budget cuts: In total, it faces a budget deficit of around 37 million euros in 2025. For now, the university should be able to mitigate these cuts by up to fifty percent through its reserve funds. The remaining half will come from short-term measures that will apply only to the year 2025 for the time being. Unfortunately, it remains unclear whether additional cuts will be announced for Freie Universität Berlin over the course of 2025.
Even less is known about the plans for 2026 and 2027, and how much money the university will be expected to save then. The university’s decision to make use of its reserve funds to soften the blow of these considerable cutbacks means that many of its planned construction projects will now have to be revised. The funding originally planned for construction and renovation works will now have to be used to preserve existing research, study, teaching, and administrative structures at Freie Universität Berlin.
Where Freie Universität Plans to Reduce Spending in 2025
Freie Universität is forced to take extensive measures in order to meet around fifty percent of the mandated budget cuts that have been declared for 2025. These measures will have a tangible impact on university life and will affect all employees and students at Freie Universität.
Human Resources
-
Recruitment: New positions in central university administration and central facilities will only be created, advertised, and filled in exceptional cases and with the express permission of the Executive Board.
-
Staffing budgets: Departments and central institutes will be required to reduce their personnel costs by six percent.
- Early appointments for regular professorships (Strukturplanprofessuren): These will be decided upon by the Executive Board on a case-by-case basis.
Material Funds and Central Funds
- Material funds: No additional cutbacks; however, it will be necessary to make economical use of resources. Upper limits for the amount of funding that can be carried over to the next calendar year to be provisionally introduced in 2026.
- Central management funds: Cutbacks of up to fifty percent. Protected areas such as faculty recruitment funding and the General Professional Skills curriculum will be unaffected.
Research
- There will be a reduction in the amount of funding for supplementary funding for infrastructure and equipment costs.
“Our overarching aim is to ensure that individual divisions and units can continue their day-to-day work to the greatest extent possible. We will try to navigate step by step, staying in close communication with the departments, central administration, the central facilities, and other offices across the university as we work together to absorb the impacts of these cuts. We must also be prepared for more financial cuts in the future – cutbacks that we in no way agree with – due to their scale, lack of planning and ideas, volume, and consequences, especially when it comes to construction and renovation work.”
Andrea Güttner, Director of Administration and Finance at Freie Universität Berlin (temporarily entrusted with the performance of official duties)
