The designated head of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Cultural Affairs (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus), Dr. Peter Müller, made his first offical visit on July 11th, 2011 to Bamberg. On spot, Dr. Peter Müller gathered information on the current status and further plans of the National Educational Panel Study even before his official inauguration on August 1st, 2011.
The successor of the Assistant Secretary of State Josef Erhard, Dr. Peter Müller, visited the central coordination department of the NEPS in Bamberg on July 12th, 2011 along with the President of the University of Bamberg, Prof. Dr. Dr. habil. Godehard Ruppert; Vice President Prof. Dr. Anna Susanne Steinweg and Vice President Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kempgen.
The Managing Director of NEPS, Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Hans–Peter Blossfeld, gave a short presentation on the project. A subsequent discussion round with members of the NEPS team gave the possibility to discuss the upcoming questions. According to Prof. Dr. Hans-Günther Roßbach, Dr. Müller’s question, whether it was also possible to measure happiness besides all the other collected data to describe educational courses, could not be answered with yes or no. The NEPS however, contains a kind of “happiness-category”, which is composed of several aspects like healthiness or contentment.
Dr. Müller was also very interested in the additional sample of the prospective teachers, which accompanies the life courses of teachers from university to the labor market. A further important question of the discussion was certainly, when the first results will be available. Prof. Blossfeld pointed out that the first data for the adult cohort will soon be released and data of other cohorts will follow next year. The outstanding features of the National Educational Panel Study, the documentation and theory-based research of educational courses across the entire life span, will become indeed more significant, the longer the project is running.