DAAD President Prof Dr Joybrato Mukherjee said:
"Fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities around the world are currently having to cope with shifts in digitalisation, university management and the further development of research and teaching at an unprecedented speed. Reliable partners are needed to successfully manage such upheavals. It is therefore very gratifying that for twenty years now we have been working together with the HRK and in cooperation with German universities to promote the professionalisation of university management and processes in countries in Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. After two decades, DIES is still successfully developing the higher education sector in countries in the Global South with its partnership-based approach."
HRK President Prof Dr Peter-André Alt said:
"The DIES programme enables us to strengthen university management in important partner regions. Just as the HRK continuously supports the professionalisation of university management in the German higher education system, we use DIES to promote the performance and autonomy of teaching and research. These are important foundations for regional development. It is hugely important that we run programmes like these in the long term. We are very grateful that our member universities strongly support this approach with their concrete participation. DIES thrives on the multitude of individual offerings, each making a valuable contribution to the successful global development of the higher education sector. It should not be disregarded that participating German university members also put their learning experiences from the DIES programme into practice and thus provide innovative impetus to the domestic higher education system."
The DIES Programme supports universities in the Global South by offering further education and training in cooperation with German universities. The goals are to professionalise university management, align study programmes with international standards and increase research capacities. Since DIES was founded, around 7,000 university employees from 51 partner countries have received further training on different areas of university management. The programme consists of three parts: training courses for managers at universities, dialogue measures to foster regional and international exchange on university development and DIES projects aimed at promoting regional initiatives. University employees who have participated in DIES measures are also supported in passing on the knowledge they have acquired at their home universities.
The DIES programme was also successfully continued during the COVID-19 pandemic. Training courses and dialogue measures were digitised in a timely manner, and participants exchanged information about their transfer projects virtually. Currently, German universities from Cologne, Hanover, Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Potsdam and Saarland are participating in the DIES programme.
