University-industry cooperation declining

Industry funding for university R&D fell in 2015 for the first time in 20 years, figures from Destatis, the federal statistics agency, have shown.

Although companies increased their total R&D spending by almost 7 per cent between 2014 and 2015, the amount they spent on universities fell by 1.8 per cent to €1.4 billion, the analysis found.

This suggests that companies are cutting down on university cooperation and instead choosing to work with private partners and research institutes abroad, the analysis said. As a result, the proportion of universities’ non-core funding that came from industry fell from 26 per cent in 1995 to 19 per cent in 2015.