The “Excellence Initiative” is a joint funding programme of both the German Federal Government and the 16 Federal States. In the first funding phase, a total of 1.9 Billion Euros will be provided between 2006 an 2011 to strengthen the international competitiveness and to increase the visibility of German universities. Between 2011 and 2017, the second funding phase, another 2.7 Billion Euros will be provided. The programme is organized along three different funding lines:

1. Graduate Schools to promote young scientists at the doctoral level.
2. Clusters of Excellence to promote top-level research projects (without disciplinary focus).
3. Institutional strategies – so-called Zukunftskonzepte – to enhance both research and education of a selected number of universities (nine at the moment) in order to shape their profile and in doing so, transform them into internationally recognized “beacons of science”.

Due to its overall goal of restructuring the German university landscape and enhancing competitiveness of the whole system, the “Excellence Initiative” is bringing a new impetus among German funding policies known so far.

The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/DFG) was commissioned to implement the programme. In order to analyze the process of acceptance, the effects of grants, and outcomes of the “Excellence Initiative” throughout the funding period and beyond, the DFG asked the iFQ to develop and implement a sound-based monitoring-system that allows the estimation of both intended and unintended effects of the programme.

In November 2008, an evaluation report (in German only) focusing on the initial phase of the project was delivered to the DFG and Wissenschaftsrat (German Science Council) and became a basis for discussions to decide upon continuation of the programme. First results were also published in 2008 in iFQ-Working Paper No.5 (in German only).