Four universities
There are four top-performing, traditional universities in the Free State of Saxony. The universities in Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz and Freiberg feature a wide range of subjects such as Engineering, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Social Sciences, Economics and Law.
Knowledge creates diversity – this is the credo of the TU Dresden. The TU Dresden is one of the largest technical universities (28,700 students) and one of the leading and most dynamic universities in Germany. As a comprehensive university with 17 faculties in five disciplines, it offers a wide choice of 126 study programmes and covers a large research spectrum, which, in addition to the mathematical, technical and scientific fields, also includes all subject groups from the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies as well as medicine. As a result, the TU Dresden offers one of the widest range of subjects in Germany. Its specialities Biomedicine and Bioengineering, Materials Science, Computer Engineering and Microelectronics as well as Energy and Environment are considered exemplary across Germany and Europe. Internationally, the TU Dresden has earned a good reputation; almost every eighth student is a foreign national. Today, about 12,300 employees from 70 countries work at the TU Dresden.
The TU Dresden has retained its title as University of Excellence. This makes the TU Dresden one of the eleven Universities of Excellence in Germany that will receive permanent funding starting 1st November 2019 as part of the excellence strategy of the federal government and the states.
It is the centre of DRESDEN-concept
a science association founded in 2010, which comprises 28 partners from the fields of science and culture, including the extramural research institutions Max Planck Society and the Fraunhofer Society, the Leibniz Association and the Helmholtz Association as well as the researching cultural institutions in Dresden.
The TU Dresden is the only university of the nine leading technical universities to offer undergraduate diploma courses. The qualification Dipl.-Ing. is recognised worldwide as a quality certificate. Classic university diploma courses can be completed primarily in engineering and economics.
The main campus is located in the southern suburb of Dresden and is close to the city centre. The Johannstadt campus houses the faculties of life sciences and medicine. The Institute of Waste Management and Contaminated Site Treatment is located in Pirna Copitz and budding forest scientists study in Tharandt, which is located between the Eastern Ore Mountains and Saxon Switzerland.
The TU Dresden has been certified as a family-friendly university since 2007. As a result, studying with a child is easy here. Campus-Büro »Uni mit Kind« as a cooperation facility between the Studentenwerk (Student Services) and the TU Dresden supports student parents in different ways right from child care, courses and workshops to flexible short-term care.
The Faculty of Medicine Carl Gustav Carus offers a wide range of subjects and academic diversity with its study programmes of Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health ore Medical Radiation Science. Over 2,500 students are enrolled for these subjects in Dresden. International exchange is a prerequisite for outstanding education and cutting-edge research – the Hochschulmedizin Dresden puts this idea into practice since it has employees from 73 nations and numerous collaborations with researchers and teams from around the world. Innovative, patient-friendly education and the internationally visible cutting-edge research can only be realised by the faculty in close cooperation with the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus. The excellent scientific environment in Dresden and the numerous international collaborations are the other essential factors for the positive development of university medicine in Dresden.
Pioneer since 1409 – More than 150 study programmes ranging from African Studies to Dentistry, 14 faculties, 30,000 students, including 3,500 from abroad – that’s the current strength of the Leipzig University, which was founded in 1409. Nobel laureates such as Werner Heisenberg, Gustav Hertz and Wilhelm Ostwald stand testimony to the great tradition of the university. Famous alumni include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Richard Wagner and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The place where the St. Pauli university church was blown up in 1968 now draws student life into the city centre with its extravagant architecture. The Paulinum (assembly hall and university church of St. Pauli), which was ceremoniously inaugurated on 1st December 2017, taps on the centuries-old university tradition of this location. The largest new building of the university since German reunification also houses numerous works of art that narrate the eventful history of the university and are reminiscent of great scholars and students from Leipzig such as Lessing, Leibniz and Goethe. The university’s largest lecture hall, Audimax, is located in the new Augusteum building. It can accommodate 800 students and has two booths for tele-interpretation, which can be directly connected to the Audimax.
Moreover, the recently renovated lecture hall building not far from the legendary Moritzbastei student club houses 21 lecture halls with a total of 2,600 seats as well as the campus library. Here, literature in economics, mathematics, informatics as well as communication and media studies is available round the clock, seven days a week. The time-honoured Bibliotheca Albertina on Beethovenstrasse is an even bigger knowledge store.
Diverse cooperation relationships with foreign partner universities and an internationally oriented range of courses make Leipzig an internationally attractive university city. The university is in contact with 477 university partners worldwide, of which 377 are Erasmus+ partners. Doctoral students in Leipzig work in an excellently networked environment. The Research Academy Leipzig, founded in 2006, brings together all structured doctoral programmes of the Leipzig University under one roof. Prospective post-docs carry out joint research beyond disciplinary boundaries.
The traditional variety of subjects is also the basis for top-class interdisciplinary research. Based on “The Leipzig Way” model, the diversity of research approaches at the Leipzig University is to be bundled in three research centres (integrative centres) by 2025. The pioneer of this strategy is the already established German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). Cutting-edge research in Leipzig on the topics of obesity as a disease of civilisation (iOb) and the effects of globalisation processes and projects (iGlobe) are also to be organised as per this model. In numerous DFG collaborative research centres, research training groups and research units as well as large joint projects funded by the EU and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), new research topics are being developed that further enhance the profile of the Leipzig University with its three strategic research fields: Changed Order in a Globalised World, Intelligent Methods and Materials and Sustainable Principles for Life and Health.
Get a peek into the day-to-day life of students by visiting leipzig-studieren.de (homepage only in German) or via YouTube. Students from various disciplines – be it freshmen, students with children or students with a handicap – post regular updates about their daily university life here.
Together, the Universitätsklinikum Leipzig (UKL) and the Faculty of Medicine form the second oldest university medical centre in Germany and look back on a rich tradition. Today, the hospital with 1,450 beds is equipped with one of the most modern structural and technical infrastructures in Europe. Every year, patients receive the highest quality medical treatment here. They benefit from the innovative research capacity of the researchers, who put the latest findings from medical research into practice quickly and securely.
With over 100 professors, the Faculty of Medicine (homepage only in German) is the largest of a total of 14 faculties. It is a training facility in Human Medicine and Dentistry for around 3,000 students. In addition, it is one of the largest research institutions in Saxony and focusses on almost all scientific fields of medicine. International level research is carried out here. It works closely with related faculties as well as with other research institutions – an ideal scenario for students, teachers and researchers alike.
Founded in 1836 as the Königliche Gewerbschule (Royal Vocational School), the Technische Universität Chemnitz is the third largest university in Saxony today. Currently 9,300 young men and women from more than 90 countries study at the TU Chemnitz. With around 2,300 employees in the Science, Technology and Administration departments, the TU Chemnitz is one of the most important employers in the region. In the area of research and teaching, it focusses on the three core competencies Materials and Intelligent Systems, Resource-efficient Production and Lightweight Construction and Humans and Technology, which deal with important questions of the future. The central subject of economic and social developments is value creation, whose primary influencing factors result from mega trends such as globalisation, demographic development and resource availability.
Some of the 95 study programmes offered in Chemnitz are only available here. For example, the new Master’s study programme in Semiotics and Multimodal Communication was started in the winter semester 2018/19. It teaches approaches for analysing speech and gesture in everyday communication and language and image in print and audiovisual media, in Internet-based communication as well as in computer games and virtual reality applications. This represents a profile that is unique in Germany.
Ideal conditions for a leap from the lecture hall into independence are offered by the start-up network SAXEED (homepage only in German) at the TU and the Technologie Centrum Chemnitz, with whose help around 235 spin-offs with more than 1,000 jobs have been generated since 2002. This is another reason why the TU Chemnitz is considered one of the best entrepreneur universities in Germany.
Networking is given very high priority at the TU Chemnitz in the economic, scientific, cultural, sports and social environment. One example is the Smart Systems Campus, which was built in 2009 in the immediate vicinity of the university campus. It includes the new building of the Institute of Physics of the TU with a clean room of the Centre for Microtechnologies, the Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS, a start up building and commercial spaces. At the international level, the TU Chemnitz cooperates with 130 partner institutions from all continents.
Four core areas – Geo, Material, Energy and Environment – lend the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg its unique and inimitable profile that ranges from the exploration of new and domestic deposits, the development of alternative energy technologies and materials to recycling. The roots of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg date back to 1765. This makes the university more than 250 years old and thereby the oldest mining science university in the world.
Today, the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg is an international university with a worldwide teaching and research network. People from all over the world come to study and teach here. As a University of Resources for research and teaching, it focusses, among other things, on how to use the earth’s finite resources responsibly. For this purpose, six faculties develop efficient and alternative technologies for raw material extraction, energy technology, materials and recycling processes and make a significant contribution to solving economic and ecological challenges.
With courses in Engineering, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences, Materials Sciences and Economics, the university combines all areas of basic modern raw material research and application-oriented research. 3,400 students are currently enrolled for 69 study programmes. Eleven of the 36 Master’s study programmes are offered in English; in addition, the Bergakademie not only offers 16 study programmes that conclude with a diploma, but also unique study opportunities. For example, the study programme of Internet of Energy tackles current issues in sustainable energy management and combines them with the latest digitisation technologies. Close cooperation with companies gives students the advantage of being able to complete internships, papers and industry-sponsored doctorates. The Bergakademie combines theory and practice in its own research and teaching mines »Reiche Zeche« and »Alte Elisabeth«. Here the students usually get into the mines themselves and apply knowledge in a very practical and interdisciplinary manner.
Thanks to its intensive cooperation with regional and national industry as well as companies worldwide, the Bergakademie is one of the most research-intensive universities in Germany. The university also works closely with the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology, which belongs to the renowned Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. The university has held a top position for years when it comes to obtaining third-party funding.
