From the outset till today
Our university was founded on August 1, 1971 from the merger of state and private construction and engineering schools as well as institutions offering vocational technical training. At that time, the number of students was around 2,300 - today there are more than 15,000 young people studying in over 100 bachelor's and master's degree programs. Accompanied by an in-house doctoral college, around 110 cooperative doctoral students are also currently gaining qualifications.
Over the years, FH Münster has developed into a practice-oriented, international and interdisciplinary university. Lecturers and students alike contribute to the successful transfer of scientific findings into practice. This pays off: Today, our university is one of the largest and most successful universities of applied sciences in Germany.
We continue to develop - with strategy
The world in which we live today and will live in the future is characterized by great, constantly growing dynamism with many new opportunities, but also challenges. Of course, this also influences us as a university. We want to respond appropriately to the constant change and the increasing speed of change and shape the change. In a moderated process to prepare the current Higher Education Development Plan (HEP), we have intensively addressed overarching framework conditions that we see as particularly relevant for the coming years. In the process, we identified six challenges that we will pay particular attention to in the further development of our university:
- Sustainability
- Health
- Sovereignty
- Technology Leadership
- Competition
- Openness
Our last HEP defined six strategic development fields for FH Münster for the years 2016-2020. These impacted all plans of the university and its departments and affected all perspectives: Education, Research and Resources. We were able to achieve or even exceed the set goals in all six development fields. While we have no longer explicitly included these development fields in the new HEP - this does not mean that we will not continue to pursue these topics or no longer consider them important. On the contrary. We will continue to be intensively involved there and they have been incorporated into our current strategic planning in various ways.
Growing importance as an employer
The increasing student population and the continued expansion of our research activities result in the growing importance of our university as an employer. Münster University of Applied Sciences now employs around 1,000 people, including more than 250 professors, at our sites in Münster and Steinfurt and our study locations in Coesfeld and Ahlen/Beckum/Oelde.
Research and teaching at the service of society
With our educational offering and our research work, we place ourselves at the service of our society. Quality is the basis for all our work.
It is the benchmark for teaching, with its diverse range of courses geared to the needs of the market. It is the foundation for our research success, with one of the highest rates of third-party funding at universities of applied sciences in Germany. And it is the hallmark of a finely tuned system of internal resource management.
The FH Münster was the first university of applied sciences in Germany to be system-accredited back in 2011. Our quality management and our exchange processes with practitioners have received awards from the Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft, among others.
All quality features together shape the image of our modern, high-performance and customer-oriented university.
Points of reference for strong partnerships
Quality is also the mainspring for the companies that build strategic alliances and partnerships with our university. In teaching and research, we offer many points of reference for our cooperation partners. Whether in product development, company management, human resource development or communication: our partners will always find the skills they require − either in individual disciplines or by combining various elements of excellence.