Minister of Education data base

This study investigates who becomes Minister of Education in Germany. For this purpose, we developed a dataset that contains biographical characteristics of all education ministers of the German states between 1950 and 2020. As an exemplary use of the dataset, we examine the two characteristics gender and prior professional experience and link these characteristics to indicators of the size and development of the education budget and length of tenure. We show that between 1950 and 2020, significantly more men than women were appointed as Minister of Education; but there are no major differences between the parties that provided the Minister of Education. Also, politicians with teaching experience are not represented in the majority of education ministers. In turn, the majority of education ministers have previous political experience when they take office. Our database, which contains the first complete survey of the biographical characteristics of education ministers in the German states, is available to all interested researchers.