Initially, the goal of the elite program is to change the phenomenon that Germany needs to spend about 470 million euros (about1900 million euros in four years) from the rising UMTS-Lizenzen to promote the development of universities. On June 23, 2005, Germany reached a compromise, allowing support for smaller or highly diversified universities and research. The organization, management and scientific opinions of the German Research Foundation and the German Science Council have also been fully adopted. The Excellence Program is a multi-step and multi-round application and review procedure (the first round in 2005/2006, the second round in 2006/2007, and the second round in 201/2012), which evaluates the quality of proposals and drafts submitted by major international experts and puts forward them. The final decision was issued by the German Research Foundation and the German Science Council.
Excellence plan as the research concept of theme competition. Because of this, different quality and intensity of university education based on federalism reform teaching area did not play a role in the selection process. Excellence plan is only important in some aspects of graduate school teaching, such as structured doctoral training, rather than as a reference index for undergraduate and master's studies, because teaching and learning directions are not comparable.