The German Federal Minister @starkwatzinger's amendment proposals to the Academic Fixed-Term Contract Act are an absolute slap in the face to everyone who's been invested in calling out current issues with German #academia and suggesting genuine solutions. #WissZeitVG 1/ 
For a start, much of the proposed "reform" is just hot air. E.g., Encouraging universities to give #PhD candidates an initial 3-year contract: Thankfully, most already do this and those that don't aren't going to be won over by a new "it would be nice if you could..." clause. 2/
Nothing about changing the fact that the 6-year cap on #PhD contracts applies regardless of whether the contract is 50%, 75% or 100% FTE. Thus effectively confirming that doctoral researchers on part-time contract are expected to complete their PhDs in their free time or quit. 3/
And then the absolute killer: reducing the 6-year cap on fixed-term #postdoc contracts to... 3 years! This will do nothing more than severely aggravate ALL of the problems that the #IchBinHanna debates have raised (see, e.g., ichbinhanna.wordpress.com). 4/
There are hardly any permanent or TT-positions in German #academia apart from professorships. So effectively, the cap means that you either have to miraculously land a professorship within 3 years of completing your #PhD (but note that the application process itself... 5/
...is extremely long and is not infrequently counted in years rather than months!) or be entirely reliant on third-party funding to secure strings of short, precarious contracts. This is obviously problematic at several levels (e.g., pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…). #diversity 6/
Clearly, we are heading towards a near complete privatisation of non-professorial #postdoc research in Germany which I fear will have serious consequences for both the quality of German research and #AcademicFreedom. In essence, we will largely be funding funding applications. 7/
Everyone agrees that it is entirely impossible to gain the required qualifications for a full professorship in just three years in a country that still requires candidates to have completed a Habilitation (basically a second #PhD), as well as secured third-party funding. 8/
With this in mind, it is obvious that excellent people will either quit #academia (as many already have, due to the current #WissZeitVG) or go abroad. And, ironically, academics from abroad will be at a clear advantage when applying for professorships in Germany. #BrainDrain 9/
Strikingly, the word "Lehre" (= teaching) is not mentioned even once in the Minister's reform plans (bmbf.de/SharedDocs/Dow…) even though a large share of #HigherEducation teaching, supervision and mentoring in Germany is covered by academics on fixed-term contracts. 10/
Restricting #postdoc contracts to three years will mean that universities will have to cover classes with more doctoral researchers (who try their best but are usually entirely inexperienced lecturers with no teaching qualifications, and are supposed to focus on their #PhD) 11/
as well as (even) more "Lehrbeauftragte" (casual lecturers who are only paid for the hours they teach, nothing for the prep or marking, are not covered by social security and not necessarily qualified either). 12/
In short, not only would these reforms seriously (further) damage Germany's academic #WonderLand research (see
https://twitter.com/NGA_Wiss/status/1633846923064152066?s=20) but also rapidly degrade the quality of #HigherEducation teaching. I personally fail to see how these reforms will help anyone in the long run.
Or in the short run, come to think of it.
P.S.: I’m not making this up:
https://twitter.com/b_castanho/status/1637112356655210497?s=20
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