Software Campus

The Incubator for Future IT Leaders

To educate the leaders of tomorrow's IT and strengthen Germany as a location for leading edge technology innovation: to this end leading industrial and academic have come together to create the Software Campus partnership. With the active support of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research it is designed to become an incubator for a new generation of entrepreneurs and top managers in information technology and software development.

The Software Campus integrates higher education and research projects in an innovative dual concept. It embeds students in a partnership with leading German IT companies, offering them relevant workshops and career mentoring by top managers.

The goal of the Software Campus is to establish a top-ranked qualification program at the highest scientific level in which industry and academia work together to create first-class curricula. It also tries to offer a glimpse of the wide range of innovative career paths and professional fields in IT and software expertise, and to generate enthusiasm for an IT management career for men and women alike.

At a glance

Application

Prof. Annette Schavan
Federal Minister of Education and Research

"The Software Campus aims to train future top executives in the IT sector. With this qualification, we ensure that students in computer science get the toolset to make their way into top positions in industry and research.

Corporations and the federal government equally share the investment in the future of our country. We want to promote top talent domestically, but also inspire the best talent from abroad for Germany - this is the right way to advance the IT industry in Germany."

Jim Hagemann Snabe
Chief Executive Officer, SAP AG

"We want to ensure that in ten years at least every second graduate of the Software Campus will be an executive in a German IT company. And because our industry is still somewhat male-leaning, we also want to specifically address women with the Software Campus."

Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer
Scheer Group – The Innovation Network

"The Software Campus is an attractive program for top computer scientists from home and abroad. The young researchers of today are trained to become entrepreneurs and top managers of the future. German ICT companies will get more qualified corporate leaders in order to be successful globally."

Karl-Heinz Streibich
Chief Executive Officer, Software AG

"The Software Campus is an internationally unique high-potential program. The best minds in IT are trained to be the top managers of tomorrow. The Software Campus is a logical step for the sustainable protection and development of our IT know-how and the IT managers for Germany. A top-level interdisciplinary and project-based training program is a prerequisite to keep Germany a high-tech location and maintain our competitiveness."

Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster
Chief Executive Officer, DFKI GmbH

"Since ICT is the No. 1 innovation engine for all future-oriented industries in Germany, we urgently need more computer scientists on the executive boards of large companies and as the emerging next generation of entrepreneurs in medium-sized companies. The mentoring offered to the students of the Software Campus by leading researchers from the EIT ICT Labs guarantees the highest professional level, research focused on business applications, and a European network."

Dr. Udo Bub
Managing Director, EIT ICT Labs GmbH

"It is our goal to attract even more students with leadership and entrepreneurial potential to computer science and related engineering sciences. Especially for such talents there is room for improvement that is still untapped – particularly in the technology disciplines. With the Software Campus and EIT ICT Labs we are establishing an integrated complementary graduate program of education, research, innovation and entrepreneurship."

Prof. Dieter Kempf
Chairman of the Executive Board, DATEV eG

"The Software Campus promotes the future development of the ICT industry by providing special support to our domestic IT top talents. By doing so, we offer them the opportunity to competitively develop not only their professional skills, but also their management expertise and their personality."