Karlsruhe: The local operators have severe quality issues, in part due to this concept. There are like four points in the city where issues impact the whole network. The rolling stock is very bad compared to the other regional trains running in Baden-Württemberg (no/bad ac, flaky internet, no sockets, bad seating). The trains have way too little capacity, I’ve seen incidents, where they run three coaches (which they don’t do often, they are too long to enter the city), where people could not get in anymore. Some of the stations in the surrounding area are absolutely mental (Durmersheim for example), you have to walk over rails where ICEs and cargo goes through. Some trains are split or merged when leaving or entering the city, but it always causes delays. When trains can’t use the heavy metal rails and thus not leave the city due to ICEs getting priority, a lot of inner city traffic can be affected. The cooperation between the different infrastructure operators is also a source of problems.
Do not take Karlsruhe uncritically as an example where this model works well, yeah sure average numbers make it look good, but the reliability is complete ass. KVV always manages to surprise me on how bad it gets.
According to the German constitution (Grundgesetz), schools and universities are (mainly) the responsibility of the individual German states, not the federal government.[1] (A hybrid is the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology that has a university branch under the supervision of the state of Baden-Württemberg and a research centre branch under federal supervision.) The educational tasks of the federal government therefore basically relate to extracurricular and non-university education, such as early childhood education or adult further education.
At the level of the individual states, higher education and research are generally combined in one ministry and school education in another.
[1] Actually the Grundgesetz states in Art. 30: "The exercise of state powers and the performance of state duties shall be a matter for the individual states (Länder), unless otherwise provided for or permitted by this Basic Law." The authority of the federal government in education policy is therefore derived from what is explicitly mentioned in various places in the Basic Law. A short overview what that involves can be found here: https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/416682/db04b405a48dbe... (PDF, 2009, in German).
That was 20 years ago. As far as I can tell, this has not changed. (Quick googling tells me there appear to be some efforts to build an OS on it, but they all look more like proof of concepts, not like something with real-world use.)
Rittinghaus, alumni of Bellosa, is involved with Unikraft [0], which was featured a couple of times on hn, and is using unikernel technology.