Three strong universities - excellence as a team: the Rhine-Main Universities as a passion project
Bild: Peter Pulkowski
Three is not a crowd - three is exactly right: Goethe University Frankfurt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Technical University of Darmstadt were sure of this ten years ago when, in 2015, they entered into a cross-border framework cooperation agreement and established the strategic alliance of the Rhine-Main Universities (RMU). Today, more than 95,000 students and 1,500 professors cooperate closely across borders in research, study and teaching and, increasingly, also in the fields of transfer and spin-offs. In doing so, they are shaping the Rhine-Main region as an internationally visible region of science and innovation. The current goal of the alliance is a successful outcome in the "Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments".
A lot of this is about reputation and money: The Excellence Strategy is a funding program of the Federal and State Governments to strengthen high-level research and the universities in Germany and to further develop the German system of higher education. The Excellence Strategy has two funding lines that build on each other: In the Clusters of Excellence funding line, internationally competitive research areas at German universities are funded on a project basis. If a university has two, or a university consortium has three, Clusters of Excellence, it is eligible to participate in the Universities of Excellence funding line.
The selected projects and institutions are then funded with a total of around 687 million euros per year (up to 15 universities in the University of Excellence funding line, or up to 28 million for university consortia).
The Rhine-Main Universities submitted a total of six proposals for a Cluster of Excellence project and supported these projects during the competition process. A commission consisting of internationally distinguished experts reviewed all projects, focusing, among other things, on research strength. In May 2025, five of the six proposals were granted.
At the Rhine-Main Universities, the prestigious competition and, in pcarticular, the cooperative preparation of a proposal in the Universities of Excellence funding line were the key focus for the year 2024, for example in the work of the universities' bodies, during various workshops and meetings and at the annual RMU Day, which, in 2024, was held in Mainz. Unter the motto "Let's shape the future together", around 230 RMU members came together and shared insights into their – oftentimes long-standing – experience with RMU projects and the work within the alliance. One thing was crystal clear: The RMU is an absolute passion project for many of its members.
Through their cooperation and their complementarity, the three universities have been able to realize innovative ideas and projects which would not have been possible otherwise, such as joint study progras, research projects or dialogue programs. These long-standing and joint experiences were incorporated into the proposal process in the Excellence Strategy. Here, the Rhine-Main Universities alliance can score particularly well, because the partners complement each other in their respective focus areas and can draw on many years of their succesfully established collaboration.
Excerpt from the Annual Report 2024 of Technical University of Darmstadt (originally published in German)
