Berlin¡¯s universities say they are moving towards a city-wide research strategy after taking the unprecedented step of jointly applying for funding from Germany¡¯s multibillion-euro excellence initiative.

Although the strategy has encouraged German universities to compete for prestige and money, in this latest round, four of Berlin¡¯s largest institutions are applying together to be crowned ¡°universities of excellence¡±.

The Humboldt, Free and Technical universities of Berlin, along with Charit¨¦ ¨C Universit?tsmedizin Berlin, which together teach more than 100,000 students, have since 2016 announced plans to together, cooperated to create a , struck a University of Oxford, and now run six joint courses, largely master¡¯s programmes.

They call their partnership the Berlin University Alliance, under the motto: ¡°as much internal competition as necessary, as much cooperation as possible¡±.

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On 27 September, the winners of funding for new ¡°excellence clusters¡± ¨C part of the next phase of the strategy and backed by €385 million (?343 million) a year ¨C were announced, and Berlin institutions picked up seven of the 57 grants on offer, allowing them to apply together for ¡°excellent university¡± status next year.

Peter Frensch, vice-president for research at the Humboldt University, said that although the institutions had been collaborating for years, until now they had lacked a ¡°joint research strategy at the Berlin level¡±.

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Other capitals, like Paris or London, could of course take a similar approach, he said, but getting agreement on a common approach was ¡°not easy¡±. Berlin had a particularly ¡°happy constellation¡± of university leaders who could work together, he said. On the student side, the institutions were set to double the number of courses students can take elsewhere, he added.

G¨¹nter Ziegler, president of the Free University, said that the institutions would coordinate when seeking to develop new research fields. ¡°Getting us together, we can go for really big topics,¡± he added.

Christian Thomsen, president of the Technical University, explained that budget cuts by the Berlin Senate in the 1990s and 2000s had already pushed the city¡¯s institutions to coordinate their research areas so as not to lose certain subjects.

As well as a joint excellence initiative application, the universities would also coordinate plans to bid for European and national level funds, he said, adding: ¡°It makes sense for projects where a large disciplinary wealth is necessary to be successful.¡±

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Berlin university leaders are adamant that the ¡°alliance¡± is not a prelude to a merger; instead the focus was on ¡°cooperative structures¡±, Professor Ziegler said.

¡°We don¡¯t want to lose our individual identities,¡± Professor Frensch said.

But across Europe, there has been a surge of universities trying to climb global university rankings by merging, according to a recent report; in Paris, for example, more than a dozen institutions are coming together to create a ¡°³¾±ð²µ²¹-³Ü²Ô¾±±¹±ð°ù²õ¾±³Ù²â¡±.

According to Torger M?ller,?a researcher at the German Centre for ³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ Research and Science Studies in Berlin and an expert on the excellence initiative, the increasing interdependence of universities was down to the need to create internationally visible research clusters.

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But this joining together of heavyweights ¡°can be a problem for smaller universities at the periphery¡± unable to pool resources with other institutions, he added.

david.matthews@timeshighereducation.com