The University of Kassel sees itself as a university where openness, initiative, interdisciplinary and unconventional thinking are desired and encouraged. Its aim is to develop, review and implement ideas – even if they are not yet mainstream.
The University of Kassel is one of the medium-sized universities in Germany. In several surveys, students have given it extremely good marks. According to the magazine Focus Money (2018), it is one of the 30 most highly regarded state universities in Germany. In recent years, teaching projects have been honoured with an above-average number of Hessian University Awards for Excellence in Teaching.
More than 300 professorships are organised in eleven departments – the growing university is currently establishing numerous additional professorships, not least for the Kassel Institute for Sustainability. In this scientific centre, students and researchers deal with the sustainability goals of the United Nations and thus also shape the profile of the university. Numerous new degree programmes will be created in this area of sustainable transformations in the coming years. Materials of the future are another focus of research and teaching. And around a fifth of all enrolled students are studying to become teachers.
In the fifty years of its existence, the University of Kassel has been committed to further developing the European scientific tradition as well as internationalisation. Students and scholars from around the world not only shape the international atmosphere on campus – they are also valuable mediators for a vibrant link between the region and the country and a rapidly changing world. The university is part of a worldwide network of more than 500 foreign partners. This includes links to other universities, but Kassel is also connected through a variety of cross-border, international
research projects and bilateral agreements in research and teaching, as well as through the active exchange of scientists, researchers and students. At the same time, the university is particularly involved in global developmental cooperation with partners from developing and emerging countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Even though the University of Kassel is still quite young, it looks back upon an eventful history and a series of academic predecessors. Prominent among these antecedents is the Academie de Peinture et de Sculpture (1777) – which lives on in the School of Art and Design at the University of Kassel – the Polytechnische Lehranstalt (1832) as the origin of our engineering department, and, not to forget, the Landesbibliothek (state library) founded in 1580 and now part of the university library.
Today, the University is a driving force in the region and has an impact on the city and surrounding area. Knowledge transfer, spin-offs, the establishment of new research and development facilities in the vicinity of the university, active contributions to knowledge-based regional development, but also cultural initiatives and urban development contributions are all part of its mission. More than 350 university spin-offs over the past 40 years have supported economic change in the region. Not least thanks to its university, the Documenta city of Kassel has developed into an up-and-coming and optimistic city in the heart of Germany.
