German higher education 
 programmes in Asia

It all started with 35 students of electrical engineering. Today there are more than 700 young people on the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) campuses in Ho Chi Minh City and Binh Duong. The research university opened in 2008 and is the first state university in Vietnam to be developed with an international partner and which has autonomous status. Courses were initially taught on the grounds of the national university, but the faculties are now to be found for the main part on Binh Duong Campus in the province of the same name. Some of the programmes are held in rented premises in Ho Chi Minh City and can be completed part-time while students are working. A new campus is being built forty kilometres north of Ho Chi Minh City which should be opened by 2017. This is needed because the range of courses focusing on engineering and natural sciences offered jointly with German partner universities is becoming more varied from year to year. The VUG currently offers three Bachelor’s and seven Master’s programmes, as well as post-graduate education, one of the areas being traffic and transportation. As well as the tradi­tional engineering subjects such as electrical engineering, mechatronics and computer science, a business focus will also be added by new courses such as a Bachelor’s programme by the University of Frankfurt in Finance and Accounting and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) developed in cooperation with the University of Leipzig.

The “flying faculties” model is setting 
a precedent in higher education in Asian countries. The Technical University of Munich (TUM) established the first 
foreign branch campus of a German university in Singapore more than ten years ago. The Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg has been represented with a campus in Busan, South Korea since 2009. Other higher education institutions such as the RWTH Aachen offer individual courses, for 
example in Bangkok, Thailand. Professors and lecturers from the faculties involved “fly in” for a few weeks a year to their Asian partner institutions and give their lectures in a short block. The number of hours and examinations are in essence in accordance with the course regulations of the German partner university. Thus, graduates from the Vietnamese German University receive a German certificate and a certificate from the VGU on completion. “With fees of about $1,000 per semester, our courses are significantly less expensive than those offered by British or Australian private universities in Vietnam”, emphasises Henning Hilbert, programme coordinator at the VGU. A consortium of 37 German higher education institutions supports teaching, and universities and poly­technics work hand in hand. They offer study programmes which are successful in Germany in English at the partner university in Ho Chi Minh City. “The Bachelor students all take part in a mandatory Foundation Year to improve their language skills and knowledge of mathematics”, says Hilbert. This is because there can be considerable vari­ation in the candidates’ previous knowledge. All applicants sit an aptitude test at the VGU, and at the other German higher education institutions. “It is a challenge to understand demanding scientific or technical topics in English”, says the programme coordinator. “We offer our students the option of not sitting the language exam until their second year of study, so they are not overloaded at 
the start.”

The RWTH Aachen has a partnership in Thailand with the Sirindhorn International Thai-German Graduate School of Engineering (TGGS) at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok. There are currently nearly 120 students completing the two year Master’s programme in the areas of mechanical engineering, production engineering, electrical engineering and information technology. “The course content is essentially the same as in Germany”, says Alex Brezing, who holds a doctorate in engin­eering and is a visiting lecturer from RWTH at the Institute for Engineering Design. “However, we have adapted the focus areas of the programme to meet
local market interests”. One example is the course in automotive engineering. Thailand has many vans, pick-up trucks and motorbikes on its roads and serious accidents are common. “The topic of safety technology is a problem in the 
region”, emphasises the engineer, who teaches at the TGGS. “We are responding to this. We are working on technological projects, which are gaining attention in the Asian region and which are partly funded from China as well.” Intensive 
cooperation with companies is a distinguishing feature of education at the TGGS. “Our students work on projects for clients from within the industry and thus develop all the more quickly a feel for the questions which are relevant in practice”, says Brezing. Businesses lo­cated in Thailand appreciate this. “Graduates from our courses are very employable in the region and enter the industry with much higher starting salaries than their competitors”.

Practical relevance is also a top priority at the campus of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Busan, South Korea. The first German university in South 
Korea offers a Master’s course in Chemical and Bioengineering, with the first intake year in 2011. Thirty tons of materials were shipped from Germany to South Korea to build the laboratories. “The research centre is equipped to meet the highest standards”, says Rainer Buchholz, scientific director at the FAU Busan Campus. Young scientists have the opportunity here to put into practice directly what they have learned and to collaborate on research projects. “This is unusual at first for Korean students, but they benefit from it greatly.” Students are also involved in innovative research projects at the TUM Asia in Singapore, a branch of the Technical University of Munich, which was established in 2002. At TUM Create, the affiliated research centre, which is a research cooperation between the TU Munich and Nanyang Technogical University (NTU), the 230 or so students of the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes have the opportunity to participate in research into electronic transport solutions for the future. In cooperation with the NTU, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), the German university subsidiary currently offers two Bachelor’s programmes (Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engin­eering and Information Technology) and five Master’s programmes (Industrial Chemistry, Integrated Circuit Design, Microelectronics, Aerospace Engineering, Transport & Logistics). In addition, the TUM Asia, in partnership with various companies, offers an Industrial PhD Programme, which has financial support from the Economic Development Board Singapore (EDB). “Our courses illustrate trends within the industry”, says Wen 
Qi Tan from the German Institute of 
Science and Technology at TUM Asia. For example, the Master of Science in 
Microelectronics is currently being updated and will continue from 2015 under the label Green Electronics. “We are always looking for new developments and 
keeping an eye on the changing needs 
of the industry”, emphasises Tan. “Our course combines European and Asian expertise at the highest level.” ▪

Gunda Achterhold

The federal government supports, usually through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the development of 
German higher education programmes and the foundation 
of universities that are based on the German model abroad