SAPanoptikum September 2016

The goal is the digital education republic

To mark his 75th birthday on July 27, 2016, the academic students of "Entrepreneur Professor" August-Wilhelm Scheer hosted a celebratory colloquium on the topic of "University 4.0" at Saarbrücken University.

Five university professors, 30 university of applied sciences professors and over 100 doctoral students showed their gratitude and appreciation to their academic mentor and patron August-Wilhelm Scheer, who has trained several thousand students.

A panel discussion addressed the question of how Germany can continue to develop as a country of research and education in the digital world in order to achieve the necessary leading position that is so important for the country's economic success.

Prof. Scheer, who is internationally active as an entrepreneur with the eight companies of Scheer Holding with 1000 employees, brings his experience from science and business to help shape the political framework for the successful digitalization of education.

Together with Federal Minister Prof. Johanna Wanka, he is Chairman of the IT Summit Platform "Digitalization in Education and Science". On the fringes of the celebratory colloquium, Scheer then spoke about the challenges in the education sector:

"Unfortunately, we in Germany are lagging behind other comparable countries when it comes to the digitalization of our education system. This needs to be fundamentally changed. The realization of this is growing.

Foundations, individual universities, but also the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research have picked up speed. With its focus on education, the IT Summit 2016 comes at exactly the right time to give the rocket the right boost for the digital transformation of our education system.

It's not about introducing technology for its own sake, but about taking advantage of the major advances in digital education, such as time and location-independent learning, greater individualization of learning forms and content, and greater internationalization.

The use of the border-free supply of learning content via the Internet makes education a free good. It is therefore important to adapt this most important resource that we have in Germany, namely our smart people and a functioning education system, to the future.

We like to describe ourselves as a country of education, and the next stage would be the digital education republic of Germany."

Scheer had this idea back in 1996, when he founded IMC, a successful e-learning company in Europe. With his companies, the active 75-year-old now also has his sights set on digitalization.