The potential of students not fully exploited

The results of the large-scale student survey by the "Shaping the future" research centre (FoKoS) are now available: the university is not just the preserve of locals. More and more people who do not come from the region are being attracted to Siegen to study. Just under 50 percent of those surveyed could even get used to the idea of staying in the region.

However, the conditions would have to be right for this. Graduates from non-technical subjects in particular rate their professional opportunities in the region as being pretty poor. If more graduates are to stay and work in the region, the study can provide a few pointers for improvements. A project group led by Prof. Dr. Christoph Strünck and Dipl.-Psych. Frank Luschei presented a detailed report on how attractive the students rate the region. The greatest need for action appears to be in terms of good, affordable housing: students are only moderately satisfied with what is on offer. The same applies to public transport, which is of second greatest importance but ranks among the five worst rated features. Although links from the university to the city centre have significantly improved over the last few years, students see links to parts of the city located further away as being the main priority for improvement.

Students appear to be a highly mobile and flexible group: just about a quarter of those surveyed were also born in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district or moved here shortly after they were born. Roughly two thirds are younger than 25. Roughly half of those surveyed live in the city of Siegen. A third live outside the Siegen-Wittgenstein district and commute to university. Almost half of those surveyed have moved within the last four years. It is important to all students to have good career opportunities. Students of technology and engineering sciences also definitely rate these to be rather good in the region. By contrast, students of humanities, languages, cultural sciences and media studies rate their professional opportunities in the region as difficult. Although the region counts among the strong industrial regions with a number of nationally important businesses, students of economics rate their professional opportunities as rather average. This may also be a reason to not even move to Siegen. For example, commuters from other parts of the state rate the professional opportunities in their home towns as better, regardless of what they are studying.

This could be a reason why many students do not have a very close bond with the region. For example, roughly a third state that it "is not important at all to stay where they are currently living." With students who live in the city of Siegen this rate is even higher at roughly 47 percent. On the other hand, only 5.5. or 2.4 percent of those surveyed state that moving somewhere else is "definitely not an option". If you add up the percentage of those who definitely want to stay in the region and those who can imagine both staying or leaving, you come to just under 50 percent – considerable potential for the region.