Hundreds of posts empty in Germany

More than 10 per cent of professorships in languages and culture were unfilled between 1995 and 2005, according to a German lecturers' union. The German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (Deutscher Hochschulverband) said 663 posts were vacant in that period according to federal statistics. The problems were worst in classical philology and education, which lost about 35 per cent of lecturers over the ten-year period. Law, economics, social sciences and art history were the only subjects to see a growth in lectureships.