Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin is a private German university, which was founded in 1998. The university is based in Berlin, but also owns institutes in Baden-Württemberg. The university mainly offers extra-occupational study courses. Besides Bachelor and Master programs, there are possibilities to get doctoral degrees. Although the university is mainly offering economic courses, there is also the opportunity to achieve a Bachelor of Engineering. The main idea of Steinbeis University is the "interdigitation of theory and practice", which means that the students can apply their gained theoretical knowledge directly to their job. Students are usually just accepted together with a sponsoring company, where the students have to work during their "practical training". The university is wholly owned by the Steinbeis Foundation.
History
As early as 1994, the Steinbeis Foundation was working on the fundamentals of a new academy. The idea of a private Steinbeis University in Baden-Württemberg was soon in coming. The circumstances at the time, however, were not advantageous. As a result, Johann Löhn, the then Steinbeis Foundation Chairman of the Board, chose not to pursue the idea further. As systemic coincidence would have it, lines of communication were established with the Berlin Senate Department of Science and Education. The Secretary of State at the time, Erich Thies, was a strong advocate of the university – even if it existed in thought only. In a matter of weeks, Steinbeis received state approval to move forward with SHB. The university opened its doors in the autumn of 1998 offering the MBE. 1999 saw the introduction of the MedienMBA, the first MBA for senior managers working in the German media. In 2000 SHB added another string to its bow: MBA degrees for Chinese executives and German fast-track employees. In 2001 SHB launched its first bachelor's degree program. From day one, the university's entrepreneurial origins stood it in good stead: organized as a business, with the institutes acting more like "companies within a company". This set-up and the Project Competence Concept have played a key role in SHB's astounding growth. Degrees based on this model require students to "partner" with a company at the start of their studies and fl esh out a project that applies the lessons they learn in the classroom to a tangible business challenge. The degrees are rounded off by specialized seminars and training courses in key skills areas of technology, management and business – all adding to the richness of the Steinbeis curriculum. Today over 4000 employed professionals are enrolled in SHB. In total about 900 lecturers and 1100 project managers are, mostly part-time, employed by the university.
Criticism
At the beginning of 2014, the university received nationwide criticism after it announced plans to launch a Steinbeis Transfer Institute in Traunstein in September 2014 offering a bachelor's degree in homeopathy. Critics call it a "disgrace for the science center of Bavaria". According to the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Pseudoscience the course is "simply an academic misnomer." After a reconstruction of the Steinbeis University overall, study degrees were strictly controlled by the Steinbeis University and study courses like the bachelor's degree in homeopathy were banned from the program According to the journalist Weymayr, from the Christian Science Monitor, the program was a "training school for medical practitioners" which "glosses over an academic cloak upgraded" with dignity. You talk "from the master and bachelor of college, of, academic, '" says "all the serious degree programs that are committed to academic standards and are based on normal universities, discredited." The physician Edzard Ernst stated that the programme "does not even meet the minimum of critical thinking and academic integrity". He added that the implementation of such courses was "extremely regrettable - they devalue the Bachelor of Science in all other areas and have nothing to do with science." Against the accreditation of the degree program a petition to the Senate of Berlin was directed that the College is responsible. At the beginning of April 2014, Spiegel Online stated that the proposed course of study will not be introduced.
Study programs
Doctoral programs, students are awarded the German PhD equivalent Dr. rer. oec.
