Many school leavers in Saxony choose to study close to home

Many school leavers from Saxony stay close to home to study. At TU Dresden alone, one in seven students completed their Abitur in the state capital, according to an analysis by the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE). The other Saxon districts and independent cities are also strongly represented, as is southern Brandenburg. A similar picture emerges for the other universities. Leipzig University also scores well in parts of Saxony-Anhalt, while Chemnitz University of Technology is particularly popular in south-west Saxony.

Saxon school leavers are not alone in choosing to study close to home. According to an analysis carried out for the first time by the CHE, just under half of students who have obtained their higher education entrance qualification in Germany have opted for a university less than 50 kilometers away. Two thirds of them are less than 100 kilometers away, according to the report published on Thursday. Only one in five study at a distance of more than 200 kilometers from their home town. The data is based on figures from the Federal Statistical Office for the winter semester 2022/2023.

"There are certainly many reasons for the high number of people in Germany who are currently studying close to home, including the rise in energy and housing costs," said study director Marc Hüsch. "This development is in line with the results of the CHE University Ranking. Here, too, we are seeing a growing proportion of students, currently 28 percent, who still live with their parents." Admission restrictions and allocation procedures in some subjects such as medicine and psychology mean that the distances to home are greater. Women opt for a university further away more often than men.

The student body at the smaller universities in Saxony is even more strongly anchored locally. At the universities in Zittau/Görlitz and Zwickau, for example, around a quarter of the student body comes directly from the local district. However, some universities in the Free State score highly not only locally, but also internationally. According to the study, Chemnitz University of Technology and the Freiberg Mining Academy have a large number of students who gained their university entrance qualification abroad. At Chemnitz University of Technology, the proportion is almost 30 percent, at the Bergakademie even almost 40 percent - and thus significantly higher than at the much larger Saxon universities of Leipzig (10 percent) and Dresden (17.2 percent).

The CHE is a joint subsidiary of the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the German Rectors' Conference (HRK).