A new facet of cumulative advantage in higher education finance.

This article examines the allocation of financial resources in German higher education through the Quality Pact for Teaching (QPT), a competitive funding programme initiated in 2011 that distributed nearly 2 billion euros over ten years to improve tertiary education quality. The study finds that institutions with higher prior third-party funding—typically research grants—had significantly greater success in securing QPT funds, demonstrating a pattern of cumulative advantage that may have unintentionally widened financial disparities across the academic sector. This effect holds across both traditional universities and non-traditional institutions such as universities of applied sciences and colleges of arts and music, with diminishing returns observed at higher funding levels. Other factors, including student fees and participation in the Excellence Initiative, showed no significant impact on QPT success. The findings suggest that while the QPT broadened funding opportunities, it also reinforced existing inequalities linked to prior funding experience.