Hamburg is an attractive study location for many international students, especially in the so-called STEM subjects – mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and engineering. For years, the universities in the Hanseatic city have been working with various programs to attract their graduates to the northern German labor market. With the “CareerNetwork Hamburg,” these initiatives are now being aligned even more precisely.
In the funding line “Leuchttürme MINTernational” of the Stifterverband, the “CareerNetwork Hamburg” concept prevailed against numerous other projects and was selected as a model initiative for the northern region. The funding comes with a prize of €50,000 as well as ideological support from the Stifterverband and its partner institutions.
Already during the joint proposal preparation, the University of Hamburg, the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), and the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) demonstrated their special collaborative competence. The network of the three major public universities developed the application together with the Authority for Science, Research and Equality and the international semiconductor manufacturer NXP, which was submitted by the University of Hamburg. Together with eight other institutions and companies, “CareerNetwork Hamburg” will develop and implement measures that connect international students with the economy already during their time at the universities and thereby secure them for Hamburg in the long term.
Great Potential for the Economic Location
Specifically, the first step will involve developing a bilingual landing page that maps out the different phases of entering the labor market and provides an overview of the entire offering of the regional network. The central challenge currently does not lie in the lack of initiatives but in the fact that they are presented in different places and thus are not very visible or easy to find. The new platform will be supplemented by a multilingual AI buddy that offers users interactive advice in 120 languages and supports them diversity-sensitively and individually on their way into the labor market.
Prof. Thorsten Kern, Vice President for Education at TUHH: “International students are an important part of our university community at TU Hamburg and at the same time represent great potential for Hamburg as a science and business location. That is why TUHH already supports international students with a wide range of offers to ensure their study success and their transition to the German labor market. The TUHH Career Center has established, with the DAAD-funded project FitING in Germany, an offer that specifically supports international students in developing their professional perspectives in Germany. With ‘CareerNetwork Hamburg,’ Hamburg is taking an important step forward: together with partners from universities, the labor market, and industry, we make existing expertise and helpful services more visible and more easily accessible for international STEM students. The funding from the Stifterverband confirms the relevance of this approach. The goal is to provide international students in Hamburg with early orientation about career opportunities, requirements, and concrete paths into suitable employment.”
The Stifterverband particularly praised the convincing overall strategy, which builds on already existing projects and offerings, the close integration of the partners involved, and the high potential of the approach to have a sustainable impact and, above all, to be transferable to other regions.
In the funding initiative “Leuchttürme MINTernational”, the state curators of the Stifterverband select so-called model regions from universities, companies, politics, and authorities with the goal of improving the labor market integration of international STEM students. The program is particularly supported by the GEA Foundation, the Fritz Henkel Foundation, the Mitteldeutsche Stiftung Wissenschaft und Bildung and Gesamtmetall.
