Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst | |
 | |
| Abbreviation | DAAD |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1925[1] |
| Type | Eingetragener Verein (registered association) |
| Purpose | Promoting the international exchange of students and academics.[3] |
| Headquarters | Bonn,Germany |
President | Joybrato Mukherjee |
| Staff | approx. 1220[2] (Bonn, Berlin and worldwide) |
| Website | www.daad.de |
TheGerman Academic Exchange Service (DAAD;German:Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), The German Academic Exchange Service e. V. (DAAD), founded in 1925, is a joint organization of German universities and student bodies to foster their international relations. Joybrato Mukherjee has been President since January 1, 2020.[4]
The DAAD claims to be the world's largest funding organization for the international exchange of students and academics. Since its foundation in 1925, the DAAD has supported more than 3 million academics in Germany and abroad (as of 2024).[5]
However, its workings go far beyond awarding scholarships: promoting the internationalization of German universities and research, providing strategic advice to universities in the field of internationalization and concerning questions of international university marketing, strengthening German studies, the German language and German studies abroad, supporting countries of the Global South in establishing efficient universities as well as advising decision-makers in cultural policy, education policy and development policy.
In 2024, the DAAD, including the EU programmes, supported more than 140,000 people around the globe, making it the largest funding organization of its kind in the world.[6] Its services range from semesters abroad for Bachelor's and Master's students to doctoral studies, from internships to guest lectureships, from information visits to the establishment of universities abroad. The DAAD supports the international activities of German universities through marketing services, publications, events and training courses, but also through special funding programs for the establishment of international university partnerships.[7] Scholarships for foreigners are advertised via the DAAD scholarship database[8] and publicized via the German embassies, the DAAD regional offices,[9] the information centers (IC),[10] DAAD lecturers and partner universities abroad. Contact with the DAAD for German students is usually arranged by the International Office of a university. One exception is theDAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, which is aimed at visual artists, writers and musicians.
The DAAD is also the National Agency for the coordination and implementation of theEuropean Union'sErasmus+ program for the higher education sector.
The statutory name is “Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst” (German Academic Exchange Service), in legally binding letters with the additione. V. In its publications, the association also used the variants “Austausch-Dienst” and “Austausch Dienst” to clarify the acronymDAAD until the beginning of 2015.
In view of the global challenges facing international academic cooperation and according to the DAAD the growing importance of international academic exchange, the DAAD published a new strategy in January 2025. The DAAD Strategy 2030 serves as a compass for the DAAD. It analyzes the current framework conditions of international academic cooperation and, on this basis, formulates the priorities and goals of the DAAD's work until 2030. The DAAD Strategy 2030 emphasizes the role of the DAAD as an actor in foreign science policy and science diplomacy and systematically takes current developments at universities and in society into account.
Against this background, the DAAD Strategy 2030 sets four priorities:
1. strengthening Germany as a location for science, innovation and business.
2. solutions for global challenges.
3. science diplomacy in a multipolar world.
4. promoting democracy and social cohesion.
These priorities are formulated in ten strategic goals in the DAAD's three central fields of action - funding, networking, advising - and the three strategic cross-cutting dimensions - sustainability, diversity
, digitalization.
“Change by exchange” is the DAAD's motto. Through international academic exchange (mission), the DAAD promotes the personal development and qualification of people and shapes social and global transformation processes for a better future on the planet (vision).
It was founded on January 13, 1925 on the basis of a student initiative under the name “Akademischer Austauschdienst” e. V. (AAD) in Heidelberg. The headquarters were moved to Berlin in the same year it was founded; the name Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) has been in use since 1931. Immediately after the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the DAAD was brought into line with the Nazis, but it also actively sought proximity to the National Socialist regime itself.[11] Ewald von Massow, a member of the NSDAP, was appointed president. The office in the Berlin City Palace was destroyed by bombing in 1943 and the service was then dissolved in 1945. On August 5, 1950, the DAAD was re-established in Bonn.
SomeNobel Prize winners are DAAD alumni,[12] including:
Other Alumni:
The DAAD's budget comes mainly from public funds (Federal Foreign Office, BMBF, BMZ, EU, etc.), but also from private donors and organizations.
The total budget (total funds) in 2024 amounted to €752.82 million.[21]
The President (see adjacent) represents the DAAD externally.
In addition to the President and Vice-President, the DAAD Board currently consists of ten representatives (m/f) of the universities (Presidents, Rectors or Heads of the International Offices) and three student representatives. The Board members are elected by the General Assembly, whereby the student representatives must have the majority of all votes and those of the student bodies. The representatives of the universities are elected every four years, those of the student bodies every two years. The following are also co-opted as guests
· Representatives of the financing federal ministries (AA,BMBF andBMZ),
· the presidents of theGerman Rectors' Conference (HRK), theGoethe-Institut and theAlexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH)
· the General Secretaries of theStanding Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (KMK) and the “Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft”, more specifically their representatives.
The General Assembly meets once a year.
Presidents
[edit]
| Name | Term of Office | |
|---|---|---|
| from | to | |
| Alfred Weber | 1925 | 1925 |
| Viktor Bruns | 1925 | 1931 |
| Theodor Lewald | 1931 | 1933 |
| Ewald von Massow | 1933 | 1942 |
| Gustav Adolf Scheel | 1942 | 1945 |
| Theodor Klauser | 1950 | 1954 |
| Werner Richter | 1954 | 1959 |
| Emil Lehnartz | 1960 | 1968 |
| Gerhard Kielwein | 1968 | 1972 |
| Hansgerd Schulte | 1972 | 1987 |
| Theodor Berchem | 1988 | 2007 |
| Stefan Hormuth | 2008 | 2010[6] |
| Sabine Kunst | 2010 | 2011[9] |
| Margret Wintermantel | 2012 | 2019 |
| Joybrato Mukherjee | 2020 | today[11] |
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The DAAD Head Office is headed by Secretary General Kai Sicks. In 2019, the budget volume amounted to 594 million euros, the number of permanent positions as well as project and third-party funded positions was 929. In 2021, the DAAD funded around 64,000 students, graduates, scientists, artists and administrators: 14,427 came to Germany from abroad, 49,825 Germans gained experience all over the world. The “National Agency for EU Higher Education Cooperation” within the DAAD is responsible for implementingErasmus+ activities in the higher education sector, coordinating not only study abroad programs but also internships and exchanges of lecturers and other university administration staff. As part of the Erasmus+ mobility programs, 40.063 people were funded in 2024.
In addition to its headquarters in Bonn (Kennedyallee 50), the DAAD maintains a capital city office in Berlin, which is located in the WissenschaftsForum Berlin. The renownedDAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program is also affiliated with the capital city office.
A network of 21 regional offices, 36 information centers (ICs) and 6 German Centers for Research and Innovation (DWIH) in more than 50 countries maintains contact with the partner countries and provides advice on site (as of 2024). The first DAAD regional office was founded inLondon in 1927, the most recent inAccra in 2024 and inBishkek in 2025.
The Regional Offices with their founding year:
Foreign students on DAAD scholarships are supported in Germany by former German DAAD scholarship holders who are members of the DAAD-Freundeskreis e. V.
The Circle of Friends was founded in 1981 and has around 1500 members nationwide. There are regional groups in many university cities which organize the support of foreign scholarship holders.[40]
DAAD friends groups and alumni associations of former foreign scholarship holders exist in many countries.
According to a survey conducted in 2020, participants in the DAAD's Erasmus+ programs (around 79,000 participants) enter into living relationships with foreign partners (27%) twice as often as students who have not spent time abroad (13%). Furthermore, the unemployment rate for Erasmus+ students five years after graduation is 23% lower than for those who have not been abroad for study or training purposes.[41]
Since 2021, the DAAD has been supporting students who are formally or de facto denied the right to education or other basic rights in their home countries with the Hilde Domin programme.[42]
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize
The DAAD awards an annual Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize to academics from abroad for “outstanding work in the fields of German literature andlinguistics,German as a foreign language and German studies”. The award, in memory of the linguists and founders of German studiesJacob and Wilhelm Grimm, is endowed with 10,000 euros and is associated with a four-week research stay at a German university.[36][37] The Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Prize honors new scholars in the same research fields.
AA Prize
Together with theFederal Foreign Office, the DAAD has awarded the Federal Foreign Office Prize for excellent support for foreign students at German universities (AA Prize), which has been awarded annually since 1998 (endowed with €20,000 since 2013[43]).
University Integration Prize
The “University Integration Prize for outstanding commitment to the integration of refugees who are able to study”, or University Integration Prize for short, has been awarded by the DAAD and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2021. The prize is intended to highlight particularly innovative and successful projects and initiatives, identify projects with a model character and encourage sustainable further development.[44]
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