| Abstract: | ‘The Franco-German Institute: an example of cooperation in higher education focusing on technical disciplines’. In 1978 the Franco-German Institute of Higher Education for Technology and Business (DFHI) was founded, with the aim of strengthening higher education on both sides of the frontier. Being integrated into the existing educational systems, it offers the first common course of study within German and French higher education. It should be noted that the DFHI is unique insofar as it trains binational engineers who are fluent in French. The DFHI is run jointly by the Fachhochschule des Saarlandes and the Universities of Metz and Nancy I; it is binational both in its administrative and its academic structures. Graduates are qualified, from a language and a technical point of view, to work in Germany as well as in France, thus meeting the growing demand for experts in trans-frontier cooperation. At present, the DFHI offers courses in the fields of Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Business Studies for some 160 students coming from the whole of France and West Germany. They are selected on the basis of a written application and interviews. Tuition centres on practice-orientated technical, economic and legal aspects of international cooperation and on language proficiency. Studies at the DFHI begin after two years of previous study in higher education and consist of two years, the first being spent at the Fachhochschule in Saarbriicken and the second at Metz or Nancy I (Civil Engineering only). After a total of four years, graduates are awarded a German and a French diploma as well as the Certificate of the DFHI. |
