University and Education > Student exchange Germany attracts foreign students
“Germany is among the winners of the competition for the world’s best brains,” said former education minister Edelgard Bulmahn in the summer, presenting a new study commissioned by the Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW), an umbrella organization of Germany’s public student services.
 Mathematiker by photocasr user mareczko/Marek Michalewicz The survey confirms that studying in Germany is becoming an increasingly attractive option for students around the globe. About 12 percent of the roughly two million students enrolled in 2004 were foreigners. Almost 9 percent of all students had come from abroad to complete their entire university career in Germany. The others are exchange and short-term foreign students. Not only the absolute number of foreign students at German universities is on the rise, but the percentage of all students has also more than doubled in the past 15 years.
 “It shows that the efforts to make Germany more attractive for foreign students have paid of,” said Christian Tauch, head of foreign affairs of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK), Germany’s association of state and state-recognized universities and other institutions of higher education. Germany is now among the top three host countries for foreign students, along with the United States and Great Britain. About 60 percent of foreigners studying in Germany come from other European countries, about one fourth come from Asia, about 10 percent from Africa and only 5 percent from the American continent.
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