Charité considers reducing the number of students it trains due to budget cuts in Berlin. This could also lead to more severe cuts, said Charité’s board of directors chairman, Heyo Kroemer, and Dean Joachim Spranger in the Tagesspiegel.
“The savings may lead to the point where study places or entire study programs can no longer be offered” Spranger said. “The faculty certainly needs to think about this.” At the Charité, students can enroll in the fields of medicine, dentistry, and nursing and midwifery programs. Medicine and dentistry are among the most in-demand study programs nationwide, and doctors are constantly in high demand.
If the cuts remain, the Charité would have to reduce the number of doctors and scientists, said Spranger. This would have massive consequences for the working conditions of employees, the care of Berliners, and the university’s innovative power. “We consider this the clearly wrong path.”
The Charité will receive 20.5 million euros less in state funding for teaching and research, which is eight percent of the state’s funding for the university hospital. This sum was only announced in writing at the beginning of the week, said board of directors chairman Kroemer. In addition, there will be further cuts in the millions, such as for the renewal of technical equipment.
If there are further cuts in the science sector in 2026, Kroemer fears negative consequences for the excellence status of the Berlin universities. “There is a risk that this aspect will play a role in the evaluation” he said, looking at the next round of the Excellence Initiative, in which the Berlin University Alliance, the association of FU, HU, TU, and Charité, will compete with other top universities in 2025/26. Berlin should fundamentally think about how it will develop in terms of innovation after the billion cuts, said Kroemer.
Science and health are to be cut by around 280 million euros according to the plans of CDU and SPD. Before the decisive meeting of the Berlin House of Representatives, the Berlin universities plan to protest against the cuts on Thursday morning in front of the parliament. These cuts would put the entire science location at risk, as stated in the appeal.