Higher Education Systems - Austria

Austrian degree programs are offered by traditional (research) Universities (Universitäten) and by UAS (Fachhochschulen). Their contents and objectives are defined by the universities and are subject to approval by the ministry of education. Universities can be public or private but in either case they have to be consistent with the ministry’s requirements.

A diploma from the secondary school (=Matura) is required as general qualification for university admission. Traditional universities do not require any additional entrance exam in Informatics; UAS may apply their own requirements.

Higher education in Austria is organized according to the Bologna agreement in three levels (this is the case for traditional Universities and also for UAS):

• Bachelor’s program (three years)
• Master’s program (two years)
• PhD program (minimum three years)

Only traditional Universities have the authorization to award doctoral degrees. PhD Candidates (Prädocs) can be financed by the university. In this case, they are employed as Universitätsassistent. Or, they can be financed by grants, funds or industrial cooperation and be employed as Forschungsassistent / Projektassistent. There are also PhD Candidates who are not funded at all and who do not have any employment contract.

The same system applies for Postdoctoral Researchers (postdocs) who can be employed as Universitätsassistent or Forschungsassistent/Projektassistent, depending on their funding source.

The academic year in Austria is divided into semesters (winter and summer semester) and starts in October. Degree programs may start in the winter semester only (= October), or they can start both in winter and summer semester (= March).

Higher education in Informatics is usually provided at faculties of Informatics, faculties of sciences, faculties of engineering, and to a smaller extent at other areas.

At Bachelor’s and Master’s level there are numerous degree programs with different names. Depending on the degree program the following degrees are awarded:

At the Bachelor’s level:

• Bachelor of Science.

At the Master’s level:

• Diplom-Ingenieur/Diplom-Ingenieurin (Dipl.-Ing / DI), comparable with Master of Science
• Master of Science

The course load for a Bachelor’s program is 180 ECTS in total, for a Master’s program 120 ECTS, and for a PhD program 180 ECTS. For all three degree programs a final thesis has to be submitted.

To the best of our knowledge internships within a company are not required, although a lot of computer science students work in the field of Informatics either during their holidays or they work part-time during the year.