The Technische Universität Dresden dates back to the Technische Bildungsanstalt Dresden, founded in 1828 and, thus, ranks among the oldest technical-academic educational establishments in Germany.
The TU Dresden has about 35.000 students and almost 4.200 permanent employees (excepting the Faculty of Medicine), 419 professors among them, and, thus, is the largest university in Saxony, today.
Having been committed to sciences and the engineering before the reunification of Germany, TU Dresden now is a multi-duscipline university, also offering humanities and social sciences as well as medicine. There are only few universities in Germany which are able to match this broad scientific spectrum.
Many degrees which can be obtained at TU Dresden are internationally acknowledged. The bachelor's degree was introduced at the end of the 1990s and is now awarded in all humanities and social sciences study courses. The master's degree can be obtained in numerous courses as well. Also, it is to be emphasised that the Technische Universität Dresden is Germany's only non-distance university to offer a degree in mechanical engineering and civil engineering by correspondence course ("Dresdner Modell").
TU Dresden complements this broad offer of course programmes by participating in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). ECTS is a system for crediting students' performances, so the achievements of a student at a foreign university can be transferred to their home university, given ECTS is applied at both universities. TU Dresden has introduced this system at almost all faculties and, thus, is one of the forerunners among German universities.
At the outset of the 1990s TU Dresden was restructured and has since then consistently turned toward competitiveness. This, of course, includes a business-oriented way of thinking and action as well as expanding already existing partnerships of science with industry and economy. Leading companies have acknowledged the university's commitment to practice-oriented teaching and research by funding eleven endowed chairs.
TU Dresden has developed, successfully introduced and implemented a budgetary model called "output-oriented self-regulation". Already in 1994, TU Dresden launched a patent initiative which safeguards an inventor's patent rights and provides rapid conversion of inventions into marketable products.
Students also benefit from this practice-oriented and interdisciplinary co-operation as teachings and research are based on the principle of incorporating students and graduates into current research tasks as soon as possible.
Since 2005, German Research Foundation has been funding a research centre on "regenerative therapies" with 60 million euros over a period of twelve years. For the TU Dresden the DFG Research Centre represents an important milestone in developing to one of Europe's leading centres of biology, medicine and biotechnology.
TU Dresden is the only university in East Germany which has been approved of a graduate school (Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering) and a cluster of excellence (From Cells to Tissues to Therapies) in the first stage of the "excellence initiative". This competition has been launched by the federal state of Germany in order to promote excellence in research at German universities.
As technical university, TU Dresden offers favourable conditions for the acquisition of third-party funds. In the annual balance of 2003, this amount exceeded the 100-million-euro-limit for the first time; in 2006, third-party funds even amounted to 113 million euros. Predominantly, funds come from public sources like the Federal Ministry for Research, German Research Foundation and European Union. However, funds by industry for mission oriented research have gained more and more importance.
Close contact between companies, professors and students forms the basis for co-operation, without which the settlement of important industries in Dresden during recent years would hardly have been possible. Infineon, AMD and Volkswagen are beacons of industry and represent numerous flourishing component suppliers and service companies which, without the potential of TU Dresden, undoubtedly have settled elswhere.
Also, TU Dresden has substantially influenced that Dresden has been appointed "city of science" in 2006.
TU Dresden-graduates as well as anyone else who is interested can choose from various further education courses which are both practice-oriented and designed for individual learning. The offer includes more than 30 post-graduate courses, also awarding internationally accepted degrees, blended learning and career guidance.