Fritz Scholz has compiled an interesting and timely special issue on “Electrochemistry and education” for this journal, which is preceded by his own thoughts [1]. Fritz Scholz and I had an exchange on the topic in connection with my new textbook on electrochemistry in German language [2], which testifies to my interest in the subject of the special issues. I follow the suggestion of Fritz Scholz to write up some of my thoughts from our discussion.

Fritz Scholz’ editorial starts with a historical review highlighting the importance of Wilhelm Humboldt’s reforms of university education (combining original research with teaching in the person of the professor), which spread from Berlin to Prussia and to a large part of the Western world. I find it important that this reform built on a much longer tradition, namely, the European model of universities, which has become a success story around the globe. It has demonstrated quite an immunity against changes in political systems or economic boundary conditions. I find this particular remarkable because the system by itself is quite vulnerable to extreme oscillations in quality and open to misuse. When looking from a distance, it may even seem surprising that such a system has been adopted more or less everywhere although it is built strongly on discourse, i.e., the exchange of conflicting opinions in front of an educated audience in a protected space. It thus may be considered as a provocation by any authority; yet, the principle of free discussions in a confined space was not fundamentally questioned anymore for universities when Humboldt put forward his ideas, even in the at that time quite authoritarian Prussian kingdom. After the shock of the Napoleonian wars, it was clear that returning to business as usual was not an option. Overcoming inherited role assignments in society (at least for the intellectual elite) and pursuing of exotic ideas had become a necessity to keep the society competitive in the interest of the ruler. In other word, Humboldt was there at the right time with the right plan.

To me a very interesting questions is why other, far distant countries eventually introduced universities instead of their own traditions of higher education, for instance in China, despite their even longer tradition and many inventions that they had brought up.

As a textbook author, I was very happy about Scholz’ reinforcing statements on the continuing significance of textbooks for structuring a subject area. Scholz describes the difficulties to generate an economic incentive for publishers to come up with a new generation of high-quality textbooks, which is particular true for non-English books. “Living textbooks” that constantly experience an update and also limit the work load for an individual contributor to a manageable extent seems a good idea in this respect. However, I must confess that my very own experience with papers that worked up a specialized topic from the perspective of academic teaching were mostly disappointing. I rather benefited from book chapters and longer review papers. Provoked by Scholz’ editorial, I tend to assume that the length restrictions of smaller educational papers often prevent the authors from placing the subject in a (changing) context and to make links to other areas of a wider subject, which would just be the task often assumed by well-written book chapters. My observation may also be linked to the targeted “life time” of book chapters vs. educational papers.

Another major concern addressed in Scholz’ editorial are negative changes in the academic systems caused by neoliberal ideas on how universities should be governed. I feel there are more grand challenges for some subject areas, among them electrochemistry. Education requires reflection and this requires time. The neoliberal changes may to a substantial part account for the perceived shortage of time on the side of the university staff. To my very personal observation, the (perceived) shortage of time is even more serious on the side of the students! I suspect that this is not only due to the economic necessity to earn a living besides the study and the stiff module structure of our current curricula, but it is associated with a wide-spread discomfort of many students to devote themselves completely to the selected subject. There are many activities outside of the university that compete with the course content for the attention of the students. In this regard, the proportions of a general academic education, specialized topical knowledges at the front of research, and “employability” has to be renegotiated within the universities but also between universities and society, who eventually has to pay the bill for the universities (either from taxpayer or directly from students/parents). Quite clearly, the cost of modern universities cannot be compared to the cost at the time of Humboldt, simply because nowadays a much larger fraction of the population goes through the universities. I find it logical that sensible results of such negotiation processes will have different emphasis on different aspects of academic education, which may depend on the differentiation within the higher education system, the economic capacity of a society, and the employment opportunities of graduates in different sectors of the society at a particular time and location. I am actually quite relaxed with respect to the bargaining about the structure of curricula; in one moment the pendulum swings in one direction and later in the opposite direction. European universities have survived inquisition, the Nazi regime, and communisms; they will cope with neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and neocommunism though this comforting perspectives may be of little help on a perhaps 15-year perspective, in which colleagues may be acutely hit by restructuring measures in their institutions.

With respect to electrochemistry, there is another aspect that deserves attention. Many colleagues of my age or younger in North America are not affiliated with a chemistry department but with engineering departments, sometimes even mechanical engineering. This trend can also be traced in India or China. Perhaps it is already under way in Germany as well. This will have profound and long-term consequences, from which starting point students will embark into electrochemistry. I am unsure if textbooks (including my own one) will pick up those students at the point where they are standing—if such a common starting point does exist at all. At least in Germany, an engineering curriculum, even when strongly enriched by elements of basic science, is characterized by a large variety of subjects leaving little time for each of them. This brings the time shortage discussed above to a new level.

Teaching language is another interesting and likely controversial topic. Probably many readers would agree with BSc. courses in the mother tongue of the students. This seems sensible and certainly doable for rather large language areas like Spanish, French, and German. But how about those languages that really have a small number of native speakers like Finish or Danish. For academic textbooks, this would mean fewer potential readers/buyers and fewer writers/translators. However, it seems to me that the named countries achieve excellent records by starting the university education in English or with English textbooks right from the beginning on. Should this be actually true, what would it mean for other non-English teaching languages?

All in all, the topic “education in electrochemistry” will continue to unfold new interesting facets that will require contemporary answers that most likely will have truly universal as well as local aspects.