Each percent counts: Germany is lacking students in technical study courses. However, the Federal Statistical Office recently announced that the number of freshmen in mechanical engineering has increased by 11% or 27,700 students this year as compared to last year. Taking into account all kinds of engineering study courses the number of freshmen grew by 9% to 61,600 young people. Apart from mechanical engineering two-digit growth rates were also registered in the number of freshmen for structural engineering (+16%) and urban/regional planning (+11%).
In the field of electrical engineering, however, the number of first-year-students increased by 4% only as compared to last year.
The number of all first-year-students in all study courses at German universities increased as well. At the beginning of the winter semester 2007/2008 there were in total 313,500 people taking up a study course at German universities which is an increase by 6% as compared to the previous year. Over the same period, however, the total number of students at German universities fell by 2% to 1.94 million.
Not only did the number of freshmen in engineering courses increase, but also that in agricultural, forestal and nutritional sciences as well as for economic studies, jurisprudence and social sciences. In all these fields the number of first-year-students increased by 8% as compared to the previous year. For maths and natural sciences the growth amounted to just 3% and for medicine and health science only 2%. 