The report series „Integrating of Refugees at German Institutions of Higher Education“ brings new insights from the DAAD higher education programmes for refugees.

Since 2016 to date, the DAAD has been an advocate in enabling refugees to successfully access higher education in Germany with gratitude to funding possibilities given by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The DAAD supports German higher education institutions in advising, preparing and integrating prospective students with a refugee background.

To date, more than 40,000 refugees have been prepared for studies at a German university within the framework of the "Integra" funding programme. During the same period, the participating higher education institutions conducted over 300,000 individual counselling sessions for prospective students and students with a refugee background. These figures speak for themselves. The response to the support programmes is great and continues unabated. Due to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, almost 54,000 prospective students from Ukraine were advised between the end of February and the beginning of September 2022 alone. 26 percent of them were students from third countries who had studied at Ukrainian universities.

In order to constantly develop our programmes in line with demand, adapt them to current challenges and gain insights into their impact on the medium-term educational path of the participants, we have been carrying out close-meshed, project-accompanying monitoring since their establishment in 2016. In addition to the annual evaluation of the factual reports of the funded higher education institutions, which provide insight into the courses offered, the need for consulting and the biographies of the course participants, former course participants are interviewed each year in online surveys concerning their experience and educational biographical data. The information provided by the higher education institutions as well as the respondents, provide evidence-based findings on refugees in Germany, who are able to study and are interested in studying for the first time. These are published annually in the report series "Integrating Refugees at German Institutions of Higher Education".

The first part of the report, published in 2017, initially focused on the preparation and access to studies of refugees in Germany. In the second part of the report, which was published in 2018, the successful transition to Institutions of higher education also increasingly came into our focus. In line with the development and enormous progress of the target group in their academic career, the third part of the report focuses on the targeted entry into a specialised degree programmes in Germany and needs-based measures to ensure academic success. It provides new insights into the specific needs of refugee and international students for academic support and sheds light on future fields of action and development in the integration of highly qualified international students and their preparation for successful entry into the German labour market. 

The fourth and current part of the report gives an overview of achievements and summarises the lessons learned. International graduates now account for about 30 percent of the skilled labour immigration, which is essential for Germany's economic development. The experiences gained from the refugee programmes form a good basis for increasing the attractiveness of studies and careers in Germany for prospective international students. Also included for the first time is the PROFI programme, advertised in 2020, which prepares refugee professionals with an academic degree in their country of origin to integrate into the German labour market with appropriate qualifications.

All four parts of the report are available for download on this website. In addition, you can request the print version of the report parts 1 to 3 without a fee here. For sustainability reasons, we did not print version 4 of the report.