The positive trend continues: student numbers at BTU continue to rise

Around 300 enrolments for the summer semester 2024 were followed by around 1,900 new students for the current winter semester 2024/25. The huge increase in the number of applications from 6,900 to 10,800 already signalled the growth in the number of students at BTU. The University of Lusatia continues to attract a large number of prospective international students. Currently, the proportion of students from abroad is 43 per cent.

The number of enrolments in Bachelor's degree programmes has increased by around 100 compared to the previous year. Study programmes such as Teaching Degree for Primary - which got off to a very successful start last year, with over 160 new enrolments in the current winter semester - Social Work, Architecture and Civil Engineering are making a significant contribution to this result. In addition, many first-year students have opted for Urban Planning and Urban Design, Business Administration, Environmental and Resource Management, Therapy Sciences, Biotechnology and Mechanical Engineering, including the dual programme.
The BTU's Bachelor's programmes are particularly popular with first-year students from the wider university region. More than three quarters come from Brandenburg, Berlin and Saxony.

In the Master's programme, BTU scores highly with its international profile and attracts students from all over the world to Cottbus and Senftenberg. With its successful study programmes, the university generates young talent for science and transfer in the areas of its profile lines. Not only established study programmes such as Environmental and Resource Management, Power Engineering, World Heritage Studies and Cyber Security or the Artificial Intelligence study programme, which has been offered since 2023, are very successful. The new Master's degree programmes Hybrid Electric Propulsion Technology, Urban Design and Sustainable Revitalisation, Transformation Studies and Micro- and Nanoelectronics, which are immediately in high demand, are also contributing to the positive development.
For the first time, more young people have enrolled on a Master's degree programme at BTU than on a Bachelor's degree programme. More than 60 per cent of the newly enrolled students on the Master's degree programmes are international students, around 30 per cent of whom come from the wider university region and from other, mainly western, German states.

Prof. Dr Peer Schmidt, Vice-President for Academic Affairs at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, explains: "The high number of applications is a great tribute to our attractive range of courses, which we have successfully reorganised in the recent past. With their decision in favour of BTU, many young people from the region, but also from outside the region and internationally, are setting the course for their successful academic education and the achievement of their professional goals.

I am particularly pleased about the great popularity of the teaching degree programme established last year and our degree programmes in the field of artificial intelligence and engineering. The extraordinarily good start to the new Master's degree programmes deserves special mention. The subjects offered here provide an academic education for junior staff with the highest demand in the economy.
It is also a positive signal for securing skilled workers in the economy that last year's success in the area of predominantly engineering-based co-op programmes has been repeated and that we were once again able to welcome more than 100 new students in cooperation with companies."

Around 5,300 of the current 7,100 BTU students are studying at the Cottbus main campus, 1,1000 at the Campus Senftenberg and 700 at the Cottbus-Sachsendorf campus.

Students from over 126 countries are enrolled at BTU, with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iran being the most strongly represented. Overall, around 43 per cent of students come from abroad. Women also make up 43 per cent of the total number of students at BTU.

BTU currently offers30 Bachelor's and 32 Master's degree programmes, including nine study programmes that can also be completed on a dual basis, as well as two doctoral studies/Ph.D. programmes, the Orientation Studies Programme and five certificate programmes.