Record number achieved by Indian students at German Universities

The number of Indian students enrolled at German universities in the 2019-2020 academic year has reached a further record high with a rise of over 20 percent.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, 25,149 Indian nationals were enrolled at German universities last year which is exactly 20.85 percent more than in the 2018-2019 winter semester, where there were 20,810 Indian students in Germany.

The total number of international students in Germany increased by 4.3 percent to 411,601, which reflects a lower rate of growth compared to the previous year, where there were 5.3 percent more international students in Germany than in the 2017-2018 winter semester.

According to DAAD, Germany's largest foreign academic cooperation support agency, the growth rate of Indians studying in Germany is almost five times higher than the global average. At the same time, Indians are the second-largest national group of foreign students studying at German universities.

Data show that in the 2019-2020 winter semester, most Indian students at German universities were enrolled in the following study areas:

• 67 percent Ingenieurwesen/Engineering- (70 Prozent im Vorjahr)
• 15 percent Management- and Social Sciences (13 Prozent im Vorjahr)
• 12% Mathematics & Natural Sciences

63 percent choose universities or technical universities (TU) and the other 37 percent enrolled at universities of applied sciences," DAAD explains."

At 72.6, the number of Indian male students is still much higher than that of female students, at just 27.4 percent. The figures surrounding this remain unchanged compared to the previous year.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, analysts have expected a drop in the number of foreign students abroad for the academic year 2020-2021, but the DAAD believes that international applicants' interest in studying in Germany will remain unchanged in 2020.

According to the new DAAD data released by Uni-Assist, nearly 60,000 prospective foreign students from over 180 countries have applied for admission to a German university for the coming winter semester of 2020.

"This number of applications is about 80 percent of the previous year, which is an insignificant change in the face of the current global health crisis," says DAAD.

While the interest of Indian students to study in Germany may have risen despite the pandemic, the difficulties they have encountered in getting a visa appointment themselves have resulted in many not being able to attend presentation lectures, and many students have also been forced to either abandon their studies or move their studies completely.

SchengenVisaInfo.com has previously posted on the difficulties faced by international students, including Indian nationals, in this regard, as well as on their social media campaign under the hashtag #EducationIsNotTourism.

The DAAD sponsored the initiative in September, in which the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs was invited to reopen the visa application process for students from third countries.