Does the Excellence Initiative Increase Financial Inequality Between Universities?

In 2005, Germany’s federal and state governments jointly launched the Excellence Initiative to promote top-level research and international competitiveness. An analysis of the third-party funding success of 78 universities that emerged from the Excellence Competition with varying degrees of success over a 15-year period shows that the Excellence Initiative has exacerbated existing disparities in third-party funding between universities. However, this appears to have been a one-off effect that did not set in motion a self-reinforcing divergence process.