Studying in Australia for a semester - over 300 students from Hessian universities have seized this opportunity so far. This was made possible by the state university partnership that the state of Hesse maintains with the state of Queensland in Australia and which is now celebrating a milestone birthday: The first students were exchanged 20 years ago. Since then, over 600 have come to Hesse - most of them have taken part in the international short-term programmes offered by Hesse's winter and summer universities. To this day, student exchange is at the heart of the state university programme.
The agreement between the universities in Hessen and the universities in the state of Queensland was concluded back in 2002. The exchange programme began two years later. Under the auspices of both science ministries, it enables the universities to maintain close co-operation with their Australian partners in teaching, research and other areas. Students no longer have to pay expensive tuition fees at the partner universities in Australia - totalling over two million euros to date.
To mark the 20th anniversary of the student exchange, a delegation from Hesse's universities will visit the partner universities in Australia from 11 to 15 March 2024. The focus will be on maintaining and intensifying relationships: strengthening student exchange, especially after the years of the coronavirus pandemic, but also further developing the partnership around collaboration in research and teaching. There is also great interest in this in Queensland, as became clear during the visit of a delegation from Queensland in autumn 2023. The first lighthouse projects between Hessian universities and universities in Queensland are already in place, such as the International Research Training Group "Accelerating Crop Genetic Gain" between Justus Liebig University Giessen and the University of Queensland, which is funded by the German Research Foundation. The project is investigating how crops adapt to climate change.