Note: This file is part of my Study in Austria Guide.

Please note that this file is still under construction. I hope to be able to declare it a final version until summer 2003.

Please note that this article represents my personal opinion, and that I shall never be deemed responsible for any errors in it, its content, decisions based on it, or consequences of its publication. Please visit the respective institutions' web sites for official information. For further information on legal issues, please consult my legal disclaimer.

What is an Austrian "Fachhochschule"?

The official translation is "University of Applied Sciences", while I prefer "Polytechnic".

In compliance with 1993 legislation, the first Austrian Fachhochschulen started enrolling students in 1994, to complement Austria's universities. Traditionally, they offer four-year undergraduate degrees (mostly in demanded subjects such as business or computing and often highly specialised; sometimes too specialised in my opinion) equivalent to an undergraduate bachelor's/master's (engineering) or master's (business) degree, but are at the moment introducing the Anglosaxon bachelor's/master's system, with the bachelor's taking three years, and the master's a further two years.

Accreditation (i.e., official recognition) of Fachhochschulen in Austria is carried out by the Fachhochschulrat ("Fachhochschul Council"). Click here for a current list of accredited degree programmes, or here for a list of applications for new degree programmes starting from October 2003.

Graduates of the traditional system have to take one additional year at university before they can enroll in a PhD programme if their degree was shorter than a comparable degree at university (which is the case in engineering). In subjects where their programme was of comparable length, they can directly enroll in a PhD programme. Graduates of master's degrees in the new system will in any case be able directly to enroll in a PhD programme.

Compared to universities, Fachhochschulen...

• incoporate more formal teaching (about 25 hours per week in business, about 30 hours per week in engineering, i.e. about 50-67% more than at universities) and less self-organised study
• have strict curricula with only few electives which you have to complete in the regular time span (i.e., it is not possible to spend as long as you want with your degree, as it is the case at Austrian universities)
• require less individual organisation and initiative
• entail more practical work
• entail less scientific work
• have lecturers with less formal scientific qualifications but often directly from the industry
• run applied research (i.e. R&D) only (no fundamental research)
• have smaller courses (at least compared to overrun university degrees such as business)
• have selective admission to attain the desired class sizes (Austrian universities - except universities of art - don't have selective admission)
• often incorporate an integral year in the industry
• offer, apart from the already mentioned integral year in the industry, less opportunity to spend part of the degree abroad
• in many cases don't require the usual Austrian tuition fees of about EUR 727 per academic year (paid by sponsors from the industry)
• don't offer PhD programmes themselves (only universities)

By now (academic year 2002/03), almost 10% of Austria's students are enrolled in Fachhochschulen. Because of their traditional focus on engineering (especially computing), they are still dominated by male students at about 60/40, but female student numbers are increasing as there are many new degree programmes on offer, for instance in social work.

In 2002, the Fachhochschule Joanneum introduced Austria's first dual degree programme (Production Technology and Organisation), i.e. half of the time is spent as a paid employee in a partner company (what I like to call an "academic apprenticeship"). Similar programmes have been offered in Germany for a few decades by so-called Berufsakademien (i.e., "Professional Academies"; the official translation is Universities of Cooperative Education), but the degrees there are only three years long (not four years as it is the case at FH Joanneum). In Germany, it's also possible to graduate after two years only, receiving an Assistant degree ("...assistent"), which is between the U.S. Associate and Bachelor degrees.

There are also Fachhochschulen in Germany, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, which are similar in some respects, but by no means fully identical to Austrian Fachhochschulen. If interested in them, you are thus well advised to get information specifically about them.