The “mission to defend the title” has been successful: Hof University of Applied Sciences was the very first German university or college to successfully defend the title it received last year as “Germany’s Most Popular University”. This was confirmed by the awarding portal studycheck.de. In the annual survey of students and alumni, never before had an educational institution received the best marks for its teaching nationwide twice in a row. University President Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Lehmann in an interview with “Campuls-digital”.
Prof. Lehmann, the new year is starting like the old one… with spectacular news from Cologne!
“Absolutely, and I’m getting used to that. But joking aside, the news that we have once again received the best ratings for our teaching from our current and former students reached me around a week ago. Ms. Stowasser and Mr. Krauß from University Communications came to my office unexpectedly at lunchtime and informed me, beaming with joy – naturally with the request to wait for the official announcement of the portal before talking about it officially.”
Did the result come as a surprise?
“If you had asked me six or nine months ago, I would have said: it will be really difficult to defend this award the following year!”
Why?
“Simply because outstandingly positive ratings generally motivate those who are perhaps not entirely satisfied to give ratings. I had therefore expected a small setback for psychological reasons. In the end, however, we of course already knew – and this can also be seen on Studycheck – that we had once again received very good grades for our degree programs and we also knew that the recommendation rate would be pretty much on a par with the previous year. What we didn’t know was whether another college or university would still outperform us.”
Is the ranking so important then?
“Yes and no. At the end of the day, I would have been very pleased just to have the high standard from the previous year confirmed.
However, the fact that we once again came first is all the more gratifying as a well-deserved recognition of our colleagues in teaching and for our reputation as a university – I would even say: fantastic!”
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Lehmann
Where do you personally see the reasons for this development?
“In statistical evaluations based purely on the work of the university itself, we repeatedly come across what we have long communicated as the key advantages of our university: Students in Hof are not an interchangeable mass, but rather they experience very personal support from the teaching staff – our working atmosphere is familiar in the best sense of the word. This is also reflected in the communication between students and the university administration: you won’t find chatbots or automated communication here.
We always try to offer young people contact persons made of flesh and blood to whom they can turn with confidence.”
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Lehmann
In view of the technical possibilities, we don’t see this as old-fashioned or too traditional, but rather as an individual quality feature of our university that makes many things easier.”
But that alone will certainly not be the secret of success..
“No, you could certainly find some good reasons and for many of those who have evaluated us, these are probably very individual reasons. However, I would particularly like to point out that we can claim to practice modern forms of learning at our university and at the same time create an enormously high level of practical relevance in our degree courses. Many of our graduates therefore find the transition to working life particularly easy.”
Her conclusion?
“I am very pleased that our “perceived reality” is obviously confirmed by the students – a big thank you to everyone who contributes to this every day.”
