The number of study opportunities at German universities has never been as large as this year. Around 500 additional programs are added every year, despite a decline in student numbers. This is shown by an analysis by the CHE Centre for Higher Education. One in four new courses of study created since 2023 is still classically tailored to a single subject. Among other things, specialized courses of study on the topics of digitalization, sustainability and psychology are in vogue.
500 additional degree programmes per year in the past five years
The number of courses offered at German universities has increased by 13 percent since 2019. Currently, the Higher Education Compass of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) recorded the highest level of almost 23,000 offers for students. Five years earlier, there were still around 20,000. During the study period between 2019 and 2024, around 2,000 existing study programmes were cancelled, and around 4,600 new ones were added.
This means that an average of 500 additional degree programmes have been added each year over the past five years. This linear growth is remarkable against the backdrop of stagnating or falling student numbers.
Double entries as an explanation for seemingly contradictory trends in the figures
‘There are plausible explanations for the apparent contradiction between falling student numbers and growing supply,’ explains Cort-Denis Hachmeister. ‘Universities offer different models of the same degree programme, for example if it can be studied full-time or part-time. The same applies to dual and non-dual options, which can lead to duplicate entries in the HRK Higher Education Compass,’ says the expert for university access at the CHE Centre for Higher Education. In addition, a larger range of degree programmes does not automatically mean more study places. Individual large degree programmes can have hundreds to thousands of students, while small Master’s programmes sometimes have single-digit student numbers.
Many new programmes at private universities and in the health sciences
Private universities of applied sciences and universities of applied sciences (UAS) experienced significant growth of more than 50 per cent. The number of additional programmes offered at private universities of applied sciences is greater than at state universities of applied sciences during the period under review. As there is also an increase in the number of students at private universities, student numbers and study programmes are developing in the same direction. A minimal reduction in the number of degree programmes on offer was only seen at the churchly funded universities.
Medical and health sciences is one of the subjects whose portfolio grew the most, with an increase of 32 per cent between 2019 and 2024. The smallest increase of around three per cent was recorded in the range of courses offered in the humanities.
Currently, around half of all degree programmes are undergraduate, i.e. lead to a first university degree, such as a Bachelor’s degree. This means that first-semester students do not have a choice of 23,000 degree programmes, but slightly fewer than 12,000 study options.
Study programmes on digitalisation, psychology and sustainability in vogue
In addition to the long-term analysis, the CHE also examined current trends in new degree programmes. For this purpose, the names of around 1,600 new degree programmes that have been added at German higher education institutions since 2023 were analysed.
Of the new degree programmes introduced last year, one in four still has a traditional name from a scientific discipline such as business administration or physics. More than a third have an English name.
41 per cent of the new degree programmes offer intradisciplinary differentiation, which means that the degree programme specialises in partial aspects of a discipline (e.g. astrophysics) or its application to a specific professional field (e.g. tourism business administration). Every sixth new programme is topic-focused, such as the ‘Renewable Energies’ degree programme.
Based on the name analysis, specialised degree courses on topics such as sustainability or digitalisation are particularly popular. The term ‘management’, which can be found in almost one in five of the new degree programmes, is also still in demand.
Universities should keep an eye on supply portfolio and demand
‘It is understandable that universities are diversifying in terms of content, i.e. offering different, overlapping degree programmes or fields of study. However, the fit between student demand and the portfolio of programmes should be kept in mind,’ says study author Cort-Denis Hachmeister.
‘On the one hand, transparency must be maintained for prospective students with regard to the wide range of courses on offer, while on the other hand, degree programmes with too few students could come under pressure. Some universities are now also starting to offer a broad engineering degree programme, for example, instead of further differentiating their courses,’ says Hachmeister.
About this study:
The study was based on extracts from the Higher Education Compass of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) in the spring of 2019 and 2024. In addition to an evaluation of the corresponding data, the names of the new degree programmes added in 2023 and 2024 were analysed. The author of the publication ‘Die Vielfalt der Studienangebote 2024’ (‘The diversity of degree programmes in 2024’, only available in German) is Cort-Denis Hachmeister.