Clausthal University of Technology


The Clausthal University of Technology is an institute of technology in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Lower Saxony, Germany. The small public university is regularly ranked among the Top German universities in engineering by CHE University Rankings. More than 30 % of students and 20 % of academic staff come from abroad, making it one of the most international universities in Germany. The university is best known for the prominent corporate leaders among its former students. In 2011, five of the 30 leading companies within the German stock index had alumni of TUC on their management board. Two of them as CEO.

History

The academy of the local Hanoverian mining authority was established in 1775 at Clausthal in the Harz mountain range with its centuries-long history of mining in the Upper Harz. Initially a school for pitmen and smelter workers, it was raised to the status of a mining college by the Westphalian minister Count Hans von Bülow in 1810. In 1864, at the behest of King George V of Hanover, the spin-off of a mining academy was founded.
Both institutions remained under joint administration after the annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover by Prussia in 1866, until in 1906 the academy was separated as an autonomous educational establishment directly subordinate to the Prussian government represented by a curator. It was one of only two mining academies in Prussia, the other being the mining college in Berlin established in 1770, a predecessor of the Berlin Institute of Technology.
After World War II, the academy passed under the authority of the West German state of Lower Saxony, it was renamed Technische Hochschule in 1966 and Technische Universität in 1968.

Organization

; The Faculty of Natural and Materials Sciences
; The Faculty of Energy and Economic Sciences
; The Faculty of Mathematics/Computer Sciences and Engineering
; The Interdisciplinary Research Facilities

Ranking

The CHE-Ranking is the most comprehensive and most detailed university ranking in the German-speaking countries. It is published annually since 2005 by DIE ZEIT.
Clausthal is placed regularly among the top universities in the majority of its engineering and sciences programs.
German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche researched the universities with the most alumni at the top of DAX-corporations.
Clausthal was placed 5th, however in relation to the size of the student body, TUC came in first.
TU Clausthal consistently has a very high percentage of international students, ranging from 25 % to 38 % over the last decade.
The largest group of foreign nationals comes from the People's Republic of China, making up between 12 % and 20 % of total students.
TUC has the highest percentage of Chinese students in Germany.
The popularity of TUC among Chinese nationals is derived from its reputation as one of the three "ABC-Universities".
The abbreviation stands for Aachen, Berlin, and Clausthal and refers to RWTH Aachen, TU Berlin and TU Clausthal. In China, these three Universities are regarded as Germany's leading Universities of Technology.
Clausthal's reputation in China was further enhanced when former alumnus Wan Gang became the Chinese Minister for Science and Technology. Since 2007, Wan Gang coordinates the science and technology activities in all of China.
As a former mining academy, TU Clausthal is one of three universities in Germany that offers study programs in the fields of metals, mining, and petroleum engineering. In this regard, TUC was referred to as the "most renowned university for metallurgy" by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In relative terms, TU Clausthal is among the universities with the most alumni on the management boards of German blue chip corporations. Most recently, this included companies like RWE, ThyssenKrupp, K+S, HeidelbergCement, Aurubis, ENRC and Jungheinrich.

Notable faculty and alumni