30/09/2007 | Germany

The German advantage: graduate studies for international students

By: Stefanie Lohmann, DAAD

What makes German higher education institutions so special are the combinations of teaching and advanced research.

Students have numerous opportunities to pursue project and thesis work within the scope of ongoing research activities. Courses are often taught by staff who are both researchers and teachers. University departments in their specific fields interact closely with national and international academic institutions and research institutes, as well as business and industry.

In order to make the grade in today's globalized market, young people need more than just an excellent grasp of their particular field. The business and scientific communities require an understanding of foreign cultures, fluency in foreign languages, problem-solving skills, analytical thinking, social skills for teamwork and flexibility. The ability to apply and communicate your expertise in changing social environments is paramount to success. These skills are best obtained through personal experience abroad in an academic environment dedicated to personal and professional achievement.

To this end, the German institutions of higher education have designed a system of rankings and benchmarking to evaluate their academic processes. Since the mid-1990s universities have banded together to test and compare their courses of study and to see how these fit the needs of both students and industry. This peer review process among universities and universities of applied sciences focuses on ways to improve degree programmes in an evaluation that examines the strengths and weaknesses of the offered courses.

Rankings are a key aspect in the continuous process of improving the German higher education system and they help evaluate circumstances in the classroom and laboratory.

Prospective students are presented with information about such things as class size, equipment, how extensive a library is and the level of satisfaction among the student body.

To make it easier for international students to navigate through the extensive range of study opportunities offered by Germany's universities and to figure out which study programme at which university best suits their wishes and needs the DAAD, together with CHE and the German weekly news magazine Die Zeit, offers the most comprehensive and detailed university ranking in Germany in an English version (www.university-ranking.de). If you're interested in finding more general information about a particular German university or university of applied sciences, you can visit the website www.campus-germany.de.

Specifically in the area of research, two organizations rank universities and their degree programmes according to a professor's research performance. The CHE and the DFG evaluate schools on the basis of outside funding and the number of published findings, or in the case of engineering, the number of patent applications. Rankings reveal how research is coming along in a particular discipline and can also help rate the performance of a university internationally.

For postgraduates, PhD students and researchers, Germany is certainly an excellent place to study. Looking back more than 65 Nobel Prize winners have been educated at German universities and Germany continues to be at the cutting-edge of research today.

They are ranked number two in the world for registering new patents coming only second behind the United States. Research is carried out not only in universities, but in industry (eg Siemens and BASF carry out their own research) and also at a number of highly- prized scientific research institutes. The research institutes are quite unique and at the forefront of current thinking. The research carried out at institutes of the Max Planck Society (www.mpg.de) cover a wide spectrum from astronomy, material science, neurological and cognitive sciences, mathematics, physics, law, to social sciences and history. There are 78 research institutes throughout Germany where 10,000 doctoral, post-doctoral students and guest researchers are placed, 50% of whom come from abroad.

One of the hardest, but most important, tasks for any student is finding the right university, the right professor, or the right laboratory. We don't have to tell you that finding the right place to complete your work is the crucial stepping-stone to your next career opportunity. Over the years, English-speaking countries have had an edge over Germany, mostly because of the language. That is no longer the case. Today, students in Germany have the option of taking many courses and programmes in English. What's more, Germans in daily life love to test their English skills when approached by a visitor from abroad and in most cases you'll find that Germans in general are quite good at speaking foreign languages.

Which isn't to say learning a new language, like German, isn't beneficial to your career. In fact, to help students who wish to study in Germany there are a number of options to learn German. In many countries, it's possible to enrol in a German course at a Goethe Institute (www.goethe.de) even before arriving in Germany. Check their website or contact the German embassy or consulate nearest you (www.auswaertiges-amt.de). Once you've arrived, you can still take part in German summer school classes that will also prepare you for the language proficiency test (TestDaF, www.testdaf.de) required for university programmes held in German. Other German classes are also available throughout the school year for a small fee at off-campus evening schools called Volkshochschulen (VHS).

Germany boasts an enormous academic and research network - both inside and outside the university corridors.