The academic landscape has seen massive changes over the last thirty years, not only in Germany. Although the paper wants to caution against labelling all transformations in western societies as neoliberal, there is no denying that the lives of researchers and students have been significantly affected by various academic reorganisation measures. With government budgets for basic provision stagnating universities are being forced to seek short-term external funding to achieve competitive advantage. Moreover, researchers are increasingly expected to be present and visible in public and virtual spaces. The implementation of the Bologna process has led to a highly rigid system of education. The inflation of the administrative load further exacerbates the situation. The effects of stagnating budgets become even more palpable when funding for teaching and research is syphoned off to pay for the administrators. This paper seeks to analyze the processes from the perspective of European Ethnology.