Germany's Education and Research Minister Edelgard Bulmahn is seeking alternatives to resurrect so-called "junior professorships" after Germany's highest court struck down a 2002 federal law intended to speed up the process of becoming a professor, according to a ministry spokesman.

Spokesman Florian Frank told The Scientist that the issue is a high priority for Bulmahn and that ministry officials are working with state education officials and ministry lawyers to study ways to craft legislation that would be acceptable to Germany's Constitutional Court.

Frank said Bulmahn supported the junior professorship law so researchers could start their "scientific life" earlier and to make German universities more attractive to the "young brains" of researchers who otherwise might go abroad.

About 600 junior professor positions had already been filled, of which about 14% were filled by people coming back to Germany from positions abroad, Frank said. "Germany needs good possibilities for young researchers," he said. "We need new, fresh ideas to be competitive internationally."

The high court struck down the federal law on July 27, agreeing with a lawsuit filed by the states of Bavaria, Saxony, and Thuringia, who said the law infringed on their rights under the German constitution to determine their own educational policies.

After the ruling, Bulmahn quickly issued a statement noting that the Constitutional Court had ruled only against a federal law mandating "junior professorships," not against the concept itself.

Frank said the goal now was to reach agreement with states on "junior professorships" in order to abide by the Constitutional Court's ruling. However, he said a junior professorship system must be "done in a federal framework" in order to ensure uniformity throughout Germany.

Under the 2002 law, the junior professorship system was to take full effect in 2010, replacing Germany's current system of habilitation, which requires postdoctoral researchers to work with tenured professors for several years before earning the title professor.

Eva-Maria Streier, spokeswoman for the German Research Foundation, which supports junior professorships, said that under habilitation, postdocs often do not become professors until they are at least 40.

Referring to the older tenured professors who oversee the younger postdocs, Steier said: "The big shots will keep their assistants like slaves for years and years." She said young researchers need "independence as soon as possible."

The junior professorship law was opposed by members of the CDU/CSU, Germany's major opposition party coalition. Although Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's SPD party and coalition partner the Greens hold a majority in the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, the CDU/CSU has political control of several German states, including Bavaria, Germany's largest. Without CDU/CSU support at the state level, it would be difficult for Minister Bulmahn to winapproval for a junior professorship law.

Education and Research Ministry spokesman Frank said that he thinks the CDU/CSU coalition has "played politics" with the issue.

Katharina Reiche, a member of the Bundestag and education policy expert for the CDU party, told The Scientist that her party supports the concept of junior professorships, but not the SPD-supported law, which mandated junior professorships in all fields.

Reiche, who has a degree in chemistry, said: "I am a chemist, and for natural and life sciences, we do not need [habilitation] anymore." But Reiche said Germany should maintain the current system of habilitation in the humanities.

Reiche said she is opposed to a clause in the SPD law that sets a time limit of six years for junior professorships, which could effectively end the careers of those who do not receive full professorships by the deadline. She also said not enough federal funding had been made available for the program.

To gain CDU/CSU support, a junior professor system must be agreed on at the state level, and not mandated by federal law. Reiche said she could envision a system where some universities used junior professors and others maintained habilitation. She said such a system would foster healthy competition between universities. "Why not let universities compete?" she asked.