Many German institutions of higher education can look back on a centuries-old tradition. The oldest university in Germany today was founded in Heidelberg in 1386. Until the Second World War German universities played a leading role internationally in many of the science and humanities disciplines. During the period of National Socialist rule, however, a large number of particularly distinguished academics were forced to leave the country and it took some time before the universities were able to regain their academic standing in the world. The unification of Germany brought together two diametrically opposed academic systems. Research and teaching in the new Länder have undergone a thorough structural change and now contribute significantly to the lively German economic scenario.
There are more than 330 institutions of higher education spread all over Germany, with no less than 117 universities, 159 "Fachhochschulen" (universities of applied science) and 56 colleges of music and fine arts. During the Winter semester 2003/04 almost 1.9 million students were registered, of whom 227,000 came from abroad and 359,000 were in their first-year.
The spectrum of study options is extremely broad. Apart from the classic disciplines it is also possible to study mining in Germany; Lüneburg offers "Applied Cultural Studies", Cologne has an institute for media studies, while at Rostock you can study agricultural ecology, to name but a few subjects from the varigated pallet totalling over 10.000 degree programmes in all. In the last few years inter-disciplinary science and research have become significantly more important.
Public (state-maintained) universities in Germany do not generally charge tuition fees. Some Master's programmes and the additional fees charged by some of the federal states are exceptions to this rule. Click here for further information