The German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst – DAAD) presented its Annual Report for 2022 at today’s General Assembly. 2022 was shaped by Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the resulting turning point, said DAAD President Mukherjee in Bonn. Nevertheless, the DAAD almost returned to pre-pandemic levels of mobility, with around 140,000 funded individuals. The budget for 2022 increased to about 775 million euros, owing in part to aid programmes for Ukraine.

‘In the past year, we witnessed the return of imperialism and aggressive war to Europe. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has brought a delusional pursuit to forcefully adjust history back to our continent. These significant changes have an impact on higher education institutions and the DAAD, too,’ said DAAD President Professor Joybrato Mukherjee in Bonn. ‘In these challenging times, we cooperated with our member higher education institutions and funding bodies to seek and find ways to respond to the multiple crises of the past year quickly and purposefully: contacts to Russia were put on hold, support programmes for Ukraine were initiated on a large scale, protection programmes such as the Hilde Domin programme were expanded, and we also developed our guidance services for our member higher education institutions concerning cooperation under difficult circumstances,’ Mukherjee continued. The long era of peace in Europe that followed the Cold War was over, he added, and in times of major geopolitical shifts and distortions, foreign academic policy was becoming an increasingly significant and responsible task of science diplomacy. This was why the DAAD did not cease to reinforce the global space of research cooperation in this new ‘world dis-order’, and to promote academic exchange and the European higher education area, he said.

Increase of funded individuals & #IgotfundedbyDAAD

‘The past year was a good year for global academic exchange, despite all crises: the end of the pandemic gave rise to an increase of personal on-site academic cooperation once again. With around 140,000 funded individuals we are almost back to the pre-pandemic level,’ said DAAD Secretary General Dr Kai Sicks.
‘The year was also characterised by intense negotiations concerning the future DAAD budget. We received great national and international support in this: using the hashtag #IgotfundedbyDAAD, around 2,000 past and present scholarship holders talked about the impact their DAAD scholarship had on their careers and their lives. These were touching reports and statements that reached people’s hearts and that encouraged us in what we do.’ Last November the DAAD was eventually granted a robust budget increase by the German Bundestag as the budgetary legislator. In addition, the generous and flexible support of the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research allowed for a number of aid programmes to be established at short notice for students and researchers who had fled from Ukraine. ‘The budget increase was extremely important in this context, to be able to absorb the significant cost increases in Germany and around the world at least to some degree, and to avoid imminent cutbacks for the time being,” Sicks continued.

International students and refugees from Ukraine

In 2022, the DAAD provided funding for international academic mobility to a total of 140,873 students, doctoral candidates, researchers and other higher education staff. 71,051 individuals from Germany and 69,822 individuals from abroad received funding. More than 20,000 of these people were DAAD scholarship holders, and just under 50,000 received funding as part of the ERASMUS+ programme. All other individuals were funded in the context of DAAD projects at higher education institutions in Germany and abroad. The funded individuals include around 10,000 Ukrainian students, researchers and higher education staff members that the DAAD and ERASMUS+ were able to support in the past year.

DAAD budget and employees

The DAAD budget last year was at a level of around 775 million euros. 1,130 staff members in Bonn, Berlin and the 60 DAAD offices around the world worked hard to promote and maintain academic exchange. Some 400 lecturers received DAAD funding for their deployment at international higher education institutions. Since 1950, the DAAD has helped a total of 1.7 million students and researchers from Germany and 1.2 million funding recipients from abroad to advance their academic careers.