The Humboldtian Ideal of Higher Education - Undergraduate Research-based Learning in Political Science

Undergraduate research within study programs have gained considerable relevance in teaching Political Science in the past few years. Yet, most of these programs are optional and are implemented at the end of the curriculum in the last year of study. At Zeppelin University, scholars of Political Science and Public Administration are cooperating with other faculties to realize the Humboldtian ideal of higher education in combining research and study in an obligatory first year undergraduate research project called Zeppelin-Year and the Humboldt-Year in the final stage of study. This paper aims to answer the questions on how fields of research by scholars can be combined with research project of undergraduate students of Political Science and Public Administration. Furthermore, there is a high effort to administrate the Humoldtian ideal of higher education between scholars and students. Therefore the second question is how this ideal can be brought into a shape that is administrable and more importantly studyable. The final question covers the fact that students and scholars of Political Science and Public Administration are cooperating with the faculties of Communication & Cultural Science as well as Economics in an interdisciplinary approach to find solutions for academic problems. So, new interdisciplinary teaching and learning formats have to be established. To answer the questions above we will evaluate the research based learning formats Zeppelin-Year and Humboldt-Project by analyzing surveys of students, scholars and administrative staff.