HSZG receives long-term planning security

Statement on the State Government’s Key Points Paper on Further Higher Education Development through 2025.

The policy paper implements virtually all the core elements of the coalition agreement on higher education development in Saxony. This is highly commendable and welcome, especially because it includes a clear commitment to and strengthening of the Zittau/Görlitz higher education hub (hereinafter HSZG).

Thus, capacities will not be reduced, and the university will remain unchanged—both in terms of its size, its broad range of academic programs—which is of great importance for regional development—and the path it has chosen to distinguish itself. The HSZG gains long-term planning certainty. This is also important because it is in a continuous process of development and must further develop its areas of expertise in teaching and its research priorities. Even more clearly than before, it must align societal requirements, challenges, and expectations placed on a university of applied sciences toward its role as a regional catalyst—one that provides academic training closely aligned with business and organizational needs and makes important contributions to regional knowledge and technology transfer. To cite just one current example, this has been achieved exceptionally well through the collaboration with the Fraunhofer IWU and the associated establishment of the new focus area on polymer technologies, which also complements the field of expertise in energy and the environment exceptionally well.

In this context, one should also consider the statement that chemistry, as a foundational discipline, will be phased out over the next five years. What is meant here is the form of the discipline as it is typically found at universities: covering the full breadth of the subject. However, this by no means implies that chemistry will disappear from Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences. The expertise will remain, but the focus will be directed more strongly toward what defines a university of applied sciences (see above) on the one hand, and toward our disciplinary priorities—such as plastics—on the other.

It is very welcome news that the HSZG is set to establish the field of nursing sciences. This will serve as an excellent complement to existing fields such as health care management and social gerontology and will also be an important building block for strengthening the new interdisciplinary research area of Health-Ageing-Technology (GAT). We intend to establish a research institute dedicated to this future-oriented topic before the end of this year.

Signed: Prof. Dr. phil. Friedrich Albrecht
Rector

Further information:

Press release from the SMWK