The Problems of Private Universities in Germany

German newspapers have just reported that the (old) private university in Witten/Herdecke and the (new) private university in Rostock are struggling – the former primarily because of financial reasons and the latter because it has not managed to attract enough student for their new programmes in law and business (see e.g. the newspaper reports here and here). In the last few years there have also been a number of similar cases where private universities experienced problems. So, one may be wondering whether this is part of a general pattern?
Looking at the specific problems I am not sure. From my experience working for private universities in the past I came up with the following general criteria for a successful private university (in Germany and perhaps also elsewhere). These are (in alphabetical order): (1) attractive building; (2) attractive location; (3) commitment to high quality research (pure teaching institutions less respected); (4) commitment to high quality teaching (e.g. small classes, teaching evaluation); (5) flexible but competitive student admissions (vs. bureaucratic procedures at public universities); (6) appealing website (not just “ok” – there are millions of other websites); (7) international profile; (8) innovative curriculum (challenges traditional universities); (9) reasonable tuition fees (demand taken into account); (10) stable ownership of university. My educated guess is that the private universities which are struggling may only fulfil less than half of these criteria.