Judges: Get professors out of poorhouse

Professors across Germany could get major pay raises after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that the basic salary agreement reached in Hesse state was unconstitutionally low.
Nationwide rules introduced in 2005 enabled states to set low basic salaries, but also allowed universities to pay bonuses to introduce an element of competition into the academic world. It removed the link between the age of professors and their pay.
But the court ruled the bottom-ranking Hesse salary of €3,711 was not enough – although it is not the lowest professor pay in Germany.
The judges ruled by 6 to 1 that civil servants were all entitled to earn a wage concomitant to their rank, experience and responsibilities – and agreed with a lawsuit filed by a Philipp University of Marburg professor, that his pay was not fair.