Academics Bare All

Well aware of the financial problems universities are facing at the moment, students at Bamberg University in northern Bavaria decided to do their part in drawing attention to the problem.

Joining in protests against proposed university funding cuts was one option, but the Bamberg students came up with a different way to raise extra cash for education.

"Instead of going out on the streets and throwing stones, we thought we'd do this in a nice, beautiful way," Birgit Limberger, one of the students who helped produce the calender, told DW-WORLD.

Limberger and her colleagues advertised the project on a student Web site and selected 28 students for photo shoots.

Personality counts

"They didn't have to be supermodels, they just had to have a good body," she said, adding that the major selection criteria included personality, charisma and a current university enrolment.

Those chosen then posed according to their fields of study: A psychology student was photographed sitting on a (Freudian) sofa, a historical preservation major cleaned an old building block with a brush.

The group even found a local company to sponsor the calendar, which is being sold for €15 ($18.50) apiece.

"That's a very good price, especially if you consider that the caldendar has 15 months," Limberger said, adding that each page had a woman on one side and a man on the other.

"That way there won't be any fighting in co-ed student apartments because people can alternate the pictures every couple of days," she said.

Beneficiaries take offense

If the entire edition is sold, Limberger and the others will collect €15,000, And it's likely to happen as there has already been enormous interest from buyers, Limberger said.

But the university said it will refuse any donations coming from the project.

"We have enough people here that find this offensive," Monica Fröhlich, the university's spokeswoman, told DW-WORLD.

She added that university officials felt they could not accept money that came from a project that commercialized the naked human body. Fröhlich said university officials didn't want to be connected with the project in case any of the models experienced problems as a result of having posed nude.

Limberger didn't want to comment on the university's decision, but said that her group had already thought about different ways to use the money.

"We're planning to offer workshops on time management, soft skills and other subjects that help prepare students for the work place," she said. While subsidized, the workshops won't be completely free of charge.

"We want to make sure that people really want to participate," she said.