Teaching in Munich
Last updated: 18 January 2010
This article was written in late 2006 during my two-year stay in Munich as an exchange and then a guest professor.
Synopsis of differences
Compared with my home institution, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, the Hochschule München (HM) has many, many similarities but also some significant differences. These are detailed below. Basically I think that at Cal Poly, we coddle our students much, much more than they do at the HM. Thus the professor support system for students at Cal Poly is much stronger than it is at the HM. I think our labs are much better too. But in the end, the results are very close. That is that the students receiving diplomas from the HM are very much like their California peers. Also worth mentioning is that the amount that the Bavarian state government spends educating an engineer is much less than what is spent (and wasted) in California. More on that below too.
Like California's, a two-tiered university system
California is unusual in the U.S. in that it has a two-tiered university system. One tier is the research-oriented University of California system, of which Berkeley and UCLA are examplars. The other tier is the California State University system, which Cal Poly belongs to. The U.C. system is research focused and has strong Masters and PhD programs. The original focus of the CSU system was teaching university undergraduates. The Masters programs at the CSU schools are generally much weaker than those at the U.C. schools. And the CSU schools are prohibited by law from bestowing PhDs. Much of the rest of the world also has a two-tiered university system divided along these lines.
This is almost perfectly mirrored in the German university system. In Munich this dichotomy is reflected in the Technische Universität vs. the Hochschule München. The T.U. is research oriented and produces Promovierte (PhDs) also. The Hochschule produced in the past graduates with the Diplom degree. This is somewhere between our Bachelors and Masters degrees. The HM department that I work in, Fakultät 03, Mechanical/Land Vehicle/Aeronautical Engineering, is very proud of this traditional Diplom-Engineer degree. The integration of the European Union and the pressures of globalization have converged to pressure the German universities to scrap the current Diplom degrees in favor of the better known BS/MS degrees. My particular department is resisting this change.
Emphasis on public universities, not private universities
The U.S. has a number of prestigious private universities: Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Duke, etc. There is no comparable set of private universities in Germany. This reflects a large cultural difference, I believe. The German society is "flatter" than American society. Certainly the difference between rich and poor in Germany is much smaller than it is in the U.S. And in Germany one sees much more public thinking about the role of society or the role of some issue in how it affects society. Also educational policy is discussed in the open, in the main-stream press. It is not unusual to find on the front page of the most widely read newspapers in Germany detailed discussions about proposed changes in higher education policy. This type of thinking and public discussion is much rarer in the U.S. than it is in Europe. Thus public universities play an almost exclusive role in educating Germans, and there is much public debate about issues surrounding these institutions. Currently hot topics, not just in university circles but also in the society at large, are the introduction of student fees and the switch from Diplom degrees to a Bachelors/Masters program. Up to now, education at German universities has been free. Yes that's right, free, as in cost-free. Hard for an American to imagine. But this is also the way it was several decades ago in California. Thus the state took on the obligation of educating its youth up to and through the university level. But student fees of up to 500 Euro/semester are now being introduced. There's a lot of public debate about this and, of course, student protests.
Very mature, self-sufficient students...they have to be
I do not think that Cal Poly is a typical school in this regard. Our student body is very young, most coming straight out of high school. So many of our graduates are 22 and 23 years old. German students, on the other hand, study into their late twenties and thirties. Two years' worth of military service or a non-military alternative are obligatory for Germans after their high school. And high school includes an additional year, compared with American schools. So many do not arrive at the university until they are 20 or so. Since the university, up to now, has been without cost, the incentive to get in and out is not as strong as it is in the U.S.
Also in the engineering program at the HM, two practical semesters, i.e. semesters working in industry are compulsory. This experience, I have found in our American students who do the same, matures students rather quickly, especially career-wise. This maturity makes the German students more self-dependent and independent of their professors. And they have to be.
There is a distance between students and professors in the German university system that does not exist at Cal Poly. Most of this is cultural and historical. The professor is still revered and respected in German society in comparison with his or her standing in America. At Cal Poly great weight is put on student evaluations of professors. In German schools, often the opinion of the students about their professors is not even solicited. Many American students rightly or wrongly blame their professors when they do not perform well in a class. German students hardly ever do this.
In the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cal Poly, professors bend over backwards for students. Professors are required to have five office hours per week. Often there is a great deal of student/faculty interchange in lectures. By comparison in Germany, the amount of interactive learning in lectures is much less. Much of this, I believe, is attributable to the class schedule and the way exams are held (see below). Even the single office hour German professors are required to hold per week is very underutilized by students. Students are timid about coming to professors for help.
Instead they rely on each other. There are study groups of engineering students in San Luis Obispo too. But I think the German students rely much more on each other than Cal Poly students do.
Class schedule, exam schedule
There is a great deal of difference between the way classes are held at the HM and how they are held at Cal Poly. Also the single-shot exams in Germany are much different than the frequent quizzing and testing we hold at Cal Poly. This has a big impact on learning and on retention of what is learned. In short, the American system, as it embodied at Cal Poly, is, I believe, much superior to the German system, at least pedagogically. But, and this is a big "but", the German system is much more efficient in terms of resources needed to deliver the teaching.
In Germany a university student does not register for classes. He or she registers for exams. There are no tests or exams until the end of the semester (usually 15 weeks). By contrast at most American universities, there are at least mid-terms during the semester or quarter. In Cal Poly's student-coddling system, often there are two mid-terms during a quarter (10 weeks). I myself usually have 4x½-hour quizzes during a quarter. The students like it that way. That way they have more feedback, sooner and more often. This difference, regular testing vs. single-shot at the end, makes a huge difference in the way students learn. In my view, the American system is far superior. Students live with a topic during the course of the quarter. In the German system by contrast, students often don't begin a full-fledged effort to learn material until toward the end of the semester. Often in class I am surprised at their inability to answer questions about fundamental things, like drawing a free body diagram. But then in the end, they do all gang together, learn the stuff well, and then spit it out on the exams. But they do not live with the topic for any given period of time, to allow the information to soak in. Thus I think the learning is short-term. They forget a good deal of what they learned for the exam. The Germans themselves even recognize this. They call this bulimia learning.
One course I teach, Control Theory, is a two-semester course, with a lab. There is no test until the end of the second semester and lab. So the outcome of an entire year's worth of work is determined in a 1½ testing session. If a student has a bad day that day, too bad. Come back next time. Thus this creates enormous pressure on students to do well. Often the tests are also quite long and extensive. In fact I consider the exams to be about as difficult as the exams at Cal Poly. However we give our students twice as long to work these exams. And for us, the stress is much less because the exam counts only 30% of the grade, not 100% of the grade like it does in Germany. We try to defuse an unavoidably stressful situation. It seems to me that the Germans try to amp up an already stressful situation.
At Cal Poly, we design tests to deliver an average score of about 75%. Also for an exam, I (and many of my colleagues too) design a two-hour test and then give the students three hours to do it. If a good number of the students are not done by the time the time runs out, I/we consider the test too hard. In Germany, by contrast, the average grade on an exam is often 50% or even lower sometimes. And almost no one is through by the time the 90-minute time limit is over.
Another big difference in the testing is that almost all exams in Germany are open-book. At Cal Poly there are open-book exams, but most exams are closed-book. Thus German students get good at looking things up quickly, especially similar problems from old tests. Cal Poly students, on the other hand, have and keep much more engineering knowledge in their heads. A German student here who I had at Cal Poly as an exchange student told me that the German students laugh about the fact that they spend their first few years of their working life just looking up all the stuff they need for work that they forgot.
Besides testing, even the way classes are held is very different. Most universities hold 3x50-minute classes or 2x75-minute classes per week. In ME at Cal Poly, faculty have fought for the 3x50-minute classes because they feel like too much time elapses between Thursday and Tuesday of the following week. Students forget what they know about the subject in this time gap. At the HM classes happen once a week. Classes usually last 90 minutes. I have one that lasts 150 minutes, once a week. Much has been written about students' attention spans (about 20 minutes). So a 90-minute class once a week is very difficult to square with that, not to mention the 150-minute class. But, of course, this makes it very efficient professor-wise. The professor must prepare only one time per week for a class. And the normal time in front of students during the week is 19 hours. At Cal Poly, which is extreme compared with normal American universities, professors lecture 12-15 hours per week. So even though I believe the American system is superior pedagogically, it is much less efficient in teaching resources.
As I've pointed out above, the end result is pretty close between the HM and Cal Poly. How can that be, given that the American system is so superior pedagogically? I think this pedagogical gap is made up by the self-sufficiency of German students and the strength of their educational upbringing prior to college.
Where is the waste in the American system that I alluded to above? In a word, in the administration. This is a plague in American universities. The growth of the university administration over the last decade or decade and a half has been enormous. A thoughtful friend of mine explains this by saying that American universities have adopted the corporate model of organization and administration. This is very top-heavy and top-down. In the not-too-distance past the CSU system achieved the unenviable distinction of using less than half its budget for direct teaching effort. That is, more than half its budget is going elsewhere. And the big growth area has been administration. Unfortunately this plague seems to be nationwide. Friends at universities around the country have complained to me about similar situations.
Distance between professors and students
I have already alluded to this above. Professors are still highly regarded in German society and by students. This reverence for professors creates a distance that one doesn't find in the American system. At Cal Poly it is most normal for professors to learn their students' names, their first names. Some professors don't mind students calling them by their first names, though I think it is more normal for us to be addressed as Dr. So-and-so. It is also perfectly normal for a student to barge into my office at Cal Poly and ask a question.
At the HM, on the other hand, this would be considered very improper and an overstepping of bounds. Students can't just barge in because all office doors are kept closed. German also has two "you's", a formal one for respect and an informal one used among friends. It is highly unusual for a German student to use the informal "you" when talking with a prof.
And even during my regularly scheduled one office hour per week, the traffic is very light. When students come to the door, they knock politely and softly, and when I ask them to come in, they come in timidly. Often they will email me and request me to allow them to come visit me during my regularly scheduled office hour.
Besides this distance between professors and students, I have found that the German work environment is also much more structured and hierarchical. Once I had a problem with my car, and I asked a lab technician in the automobile lab to give me some advice. He did. The car belonged to my exchange professor who was at Cal Poly at the time. I told my partner about the problem and that the magician Ulrich had sorted it out. "Ulrich?" he asked. He didn't know who Ulrich was, even though he had worked with him for years. I mentioned his last name, and he knew immediately who he was. Then he said, "You know here, I don't know anybody's last name. There's Glen, and Drew, and Sondra. I don't even know their last names!"
Switch from Diplom-Engineer to Bachelors/Masters
A few years back the EU met and came up with what is now known as the Bologna Accord. In this accord it was decided that all the universities in EU nations would move toward a common university educational system with degrees that were internationally recognized. The standard chosen is what we Americans are used to. In the technical field that means BS, MS, and PhD.
For German engineering academics this meant a change from the current system, which is a Diplom-Ingenieur degree and then a Doktorat for those who go further. And many Germans are not happy with this. They are very proud of the Diplom degree, since it is very firmly rooted in history and convention. They rightly point out that German industry has ticked right along very nicely with this degree for a long period of time. Why change things?
The Diplom is a five-year degree. Also up until now, secondary school has included 13 grades, not 12 like American universities. So after a five-year university stint, German students have had 18 years of school, the same that a masters student would have in the U.S. From what I've seen, the Diplom is a super Bachelors or a mini-Masters, i.e. somewhere between the two. What is interesting within the engineering academic world is that many academics and engineering professionals have said for a long time that the BS in engineering is somewhat lean for a professional degree. They point out that medical doctors and attorneys have at least six years of university-level schooling before entering their professions. Engineering is no simpler than either of those degrees. So, they ask, why isn't the first engineering degree a Masters? Also most engineering degrees are bursting at the seams with course credits, as we try to pack so much into a Bachelors degree. It would make more sense to fit this into the proper length school duration, i.e. six years.
So this is a big discussion point within the Hochschule now. Most colleagues in Mechanical Engineering want to retain the Diplom degree and claim that there is little demand from the students to switch. The colleagues all have very strong views on this, with little chance in discussion of changing any minds. What is a puzzle to me is that this keeps coming up, the colleagues keep voting on it, always against a switch. And then a little later it will come up again. It is being pushed by the powers that be, so it seems to me that they will continue to pose the question until the answer comes out right.
Student fees, coming soon
Hard to believe that German universities are still free, that is without cost to the students. This represents a fundamental difference between American society and German society. The German society and government, up to now, have regarded it as their duty to pay for the education of German students all the way through the university. In the dim, dark past, California had a similar attitude. But that has been history for a long time. In the coming semesters, German universities are introducing student fees. These have a maximum limit of 500 Euro/semester. American students would consider this a bargain, because they haven't seen fees like that for decades. For many Germans the price is not as important as the retreat in principle or the shirking of obligation that the society has to educate its youth...all the way through college.
I have also heard the viewpoint expressed that Germany's strength in the world is its educated, innovative population. I hear this especially in regard to technical advancement. So charging students for their attendance in the university is a threat to this important national resource.
No textbooks, just scripts
A related topic is that most German courses do not require that students buy a textbook. Instead the students buy the lecture notes of the professor, called a "script". Some of these scripts are wonderful. But students tell me that some are not so good. I think that it is certainly true that the average American textbook is of better quality that the average German script at the Hochschule. Textbooks have to meet a certain level of quality to make it to the market. That is the customers demand a certain level of quality. Not so with the scripts. The students get what the professor gives them. And generally they pay only between 5 and 10 Euro for a script. Compare that with the $100+ price students now pay for textbooks. In a semester, a German student will pay probably less than 70 Euro for texts (scripts), while an American student can shell out $500 or more.
So in a typical quarter at Cal Poly, a student shells out several thousand dollars for tuition and textbooks. At the Hochschule, a student now pays less than 70 Euro for texts and nothing for school. Soon it will be around 600 Euros/semester.
I may try scripts when I get back. I have found that we cover in a quarter only a fraction of what's covered in a textbook. The textbooks also serve as reference books. So a student spends $120 or so for a book that we only cover about 35% of. What a waste. It would be interesting to have a directed text and a paperback text, something economical for the students. That is contrary to what the textbook companies want to do. They stuff the text full of all sorts of stuff, publish it in hardback, all apparently in order to maximize their profits in this business.
The rôle of computer programs and software in the curriculum
In our curriculum, computers are heavily used for CAD and solid modeling. Also there is some finite element modeling. Compared with American universities, however, I find the use of software tools, especially in my field of physical systems modeling, comparatively weak. We use and have integrated an industry-standard modeling tool into our curriculum (Matlab/Simulink). The students see this software shortly after their arrival at Cal Poly and continue to see it here and there as they progress through the curriculum. When they graduate, they can start work fully capable of using this wide-spread software tool.
This software is not merely a tool for students to use to perform a certain kind of technical analysis. It is also a learning tool. Students learn how to use the software to pose and answer questions that they have. Often they teach me things about using the software that I didn't know. So they become relatively independent with it, and it becomes part of their learning suite. German colleagues here have responded to my questions about why they don't integrate this software into the curriculum with the opinion that students should first learn to think about and solve problems by hand. Once they have mastered this skill, they can learn how to use the software. If software is learned too early in the game, students will have no idea of the theory behind the analysis and become only "computer jockeys", to use a phrase often used by a retired colleague at Cal Poly.
This is, in my opinion, a very old-fashioned viewpoint with no basis in reality. My experience with students and software is that they have no fear, learn it quickly, and then use it to leverage further learning. In my field--physical systems modeling and control theory--often even simple problems in the field get mathematically overwhelming soon into them. If you have to work a difficult problem by hand, two things happen: 1) you get worn out quickly and 2) you often get so absorbed in the minute, tedious calculations that you lose your overview. That is you forget what problem you were working in the first place.
The new software tools in this area greatly reduce the burden of the mathematical minutiae. Sure, a power software tool in the hands of a novice can cause great damage. Results without the measured reflection of experience have little credibility. So what we do at Cal Poly often is teach students how to shoot themselves in the foot as much and as many times as possible with the software. They learn from their mistakes. They learn the limitations of the software, how it can be misused, what the traps are, and how to employ it correctly. And sure, we are not always successful in preventing their over-enthusiastic use of powerful software or their gullibility in believing whatever a computer program spits out. But it is much better for them to be making these mistakes in our protected environment than to be making them as novices in the real engineering world. What we have done in ME at Cal Poly is allow the novice phase to happen at Cal Poly. And this is a much better situation to foster as an educator than to ban or inhibit software use during the student phase of a career.
On a similar theme, German students are very weak compared with American students in their used of calculators. This is not emphasized in the curriculum at all, from what I've seen. Often problems posed have no numerical quantities associated with them. That is, they are posed only in terms of variables. This is a more theoretical approach than having numbers in a problem, especially physical quantities with units. So German students become adept at dealing with these theoretically posed problems. The second phase, substituting in the physical quantities and "crunching the numbers" is something they don't do nearly as much or as well as American students do. Because they are not required to do this, their number crunching skills and their ability to deal with engineering units properly is weak. The simplicity of the metric system saves their bacon often.
This de-emphasis on number crunching and the unstated influence of parsimony results in the fact that many German students have only very simple calculators, calculators that cost only 5 to 10 Euro and can do very little. In a field where we deal in complex numbers, matrices, vector algebra, these calculators are next to useless. Though I don't require it at Cal Poly, I encourage students to buy powerful, $100+ calculators and to learn how to use them. Like the software mentioned above, I have found that for the students who take the trouble, the calculator becomes a learning leverage tool. In controls some get so good that they can manipulate complex numbers and matrices with the ease and confidence that most people have only when dealing with real numbers. They use their developed sense with the calculator to push back the limits of knowledge by posing and answering questions that they could never consider without this calculator skill.
So my opinion toward those who want to postpone or limit the employment of these powerful tools is that they simply have not experienced what can happen with a student when these skills are developed. With these skills a student becomes a much more powerful, knowledge-acquiring intellectual being than he or she is working only by hand and with rudimentary calculating tools. The capability of the latter to be inquisitive and the limits on his or her question posing and answering represent in my mind a comparably handicapped student.
The comparative worldliness of German students
The age difference in HM vs. Cal Poly students was mentioned above, the German students, in general, being probably on average five or six years older. In the 18-30 age range, this represents a significant difference in intellectual maturity level. Adding to this advantage is the worldliness of German students compared with their American peers. As Americans we tend to be self-centered, somewhat more insulated and isolated from the rest of the world. Many tend to think that the world ends at our shores. Germany is Europe's crossroads, so has always been acutely aware of a world outside of the Fatherland.
Also there is a big difference in our curricula that amplifies this difference. German students at the HM are required to take two practical semesters, the third and the sixth (of eight). Often these are spent abroad. "Abroad" means in another country, so it could just be over the border in Austria. With my design background, I have been lucky enough to have a seminar in which these students come and deliver presentations on their work during these Praktiken. For me this has provided a view into this very interesting aspect of the HM-ME curriculum. I have had students with work experience in Sweden (with Volvo), in Thailand (with BMW), in Greenville, SC (with BMW), in Mexico (with VW), etc. These have been extremely enlightening. One sees how German industries work from the inside, and one sees how this experience influences the students by deepening their maturity. We offer this possibility to our students also but only as an elective, so only a small percent of our students actually participate in industrial internships.
One of my exchange professors came back to Germany and raved about our hands-on labs at Cal Poly. "It is like a mini-Praktikum", he said. And he is right, the labs are top-notch, and they do add maturity. But this is not the same as stepping outside the university and actually becoming a part of the full-fledged work-world, with normal, real-world, engineering duties. So every student in our department at the HM who enters the work world upon graduation has already had an entire year of work during his/her tenure as a student. This makes a huge difference. New working engineers do not have to learn the ways of the work world because they have already been in it, usually with two different firms, and often with overseas experience in a different culture with a different language. The roots of this probably extend back to the apprenticeships sponsored by artisan guilds in medæival times. Anyway, it is a good way to learn, especially in hands-on fields like engineering. In fact on might ask, is there any other way? I know from my experience and from conversations with recent grads that our graduates spend a good part of the first years of their careers learning this way.
Another aspect of this that is also noteworthy is that this could not happen without the cooperation of German industry. I have seen for a long time, since my employment as a summer consultant in Switzerland back in 1989, that the connection between academia and industry in Europe is much better organized than it is in the U.S. Back then I was a new professor and wanted to work for a summer with my old employer, General Electric Medium Steam Turbines, at a summer job, designing turbines. I contacted GE, and they seemed amenable to the idea. But the problem was that the red tape needed to hire me made it very hard. Simultaneously I had contacted my friend Bill Harrison, who worked for a European turbine manufacturer. With comparatively little trouble I received an offer to work in Switzerland for the summer. For the manufacturer, Asea Brown Boveri, this was a normal thing. Professors, especially from the practical universities, had regular working arrangements during the summer.
I see this also at the Hochschule. Most professors are also busy elsewhere, many working for BMW, Siemens, Eurocopter, etc. They have regular, normal working relationships with these industries, and the industries have regular ties with the HM. In fact I think one could say that these industries actually depend on the brainpower that resides within the university. The university is like an unpaid resource of engineering knowledge that a company can call on as needed to complement its in-house engineering staff. The system works well, a real partnership between academia and industry, a frictionless interchange between the two institutions.
This has also been evident in the plant visits I have made here. As we tour a plant, sometimes workers and engineers come out of their way to greet my German colleagues. They are former students and former work colleagues. Except that often they are not former work colleagues but current work colleagues. My German colleagues are still spending parts of their weeks at these companies. One problem we have in San Luis Obispo is that, unlike Munich, the engineering concerns in the area are few and far between. Austin, Texas, where I earned my PhD, is a high-tech center, and professors were also so involved. So a large part of this difference can be explained as a difference between an urban, technical setting and a rural, agricultural setting. But in these days of high-tech communication, these are barriers that can be overcome. Still I think that there is a cultural barrier in America to overcome that is mainly in the minds of our industrial colleagues. When they have a problem, the university is often way down the list of resources they think of to bring to bear on the problem. In Germany I believe that, because of the on-hand contact with the university, the academic colleague is often the first dispatched to try to tackle the problem. This institutionalized, constant working contact is a huge benefit to German industry and academia.
Okay, off the soapbox now. I just read an interesting article in Der Spiegel, the German version of Newsweek or Time. There were some interesting observations that are pertinent to this topic.
Language differences and how to deal with them is something Europeans are used to. In the article they discuss a study that was made of employers, asking what was important in a potential hire. "The big surprise: the need for a foreign language is often overestimated (by students)." But then the article goes on to explain that a solid understanding of English is taken for granted by potential employers. "This is almost always off-hand. Only about 7% of students admit a weak understanding of English." Of course American students have a good understanding of English. But only a very few have a workable knowledge of any second language. In an international environment this lack of experience in dealing with a language barrier is a significant handicap. Even if amongst two different language speakers there is no common language, the Germans, and indeed the Europeans in general, do not let that stop them. They are used to dealing with this situation, have for a long time, and find a way to communicate. Americans, on the other hand, often do not have this experience and are disconcerted by it. Often all they know to do is talk louder, and that usually doesn't work.
Interesting perspectives about German technical brainpower being the nation's most important resource:
"...experts have long feared that exactly those clever heads are leaving Germany who best can ensure the welfare of a country poor in natural resources: engineers and natural scientists, who develop products and technologies for the future.
'We're short on engineers and others in technical professions', warns German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU). 'We must tell the young people in the schools: here lies, to a large degree, the future of our land,' advises the physics-educated Chancellor." Merkel, by the way, has a PhD in physics.
Another interesting fact worth mentioning: I also read somewhere that about 60% of German students participate in a foreign study or work experience during their study versus about 1% of Americans. So in an era of globalization, the German students' attitude about the world is much more informed than that of their American peers.
Munich is Car Central
In the U.S., the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) are headquartered in Detroit. Such a concentration is not copied in Germany. But Munich can lay claim as well as any other German city to being Car Central in Germany. BMW of course stands for "Bavarian Motor Works", and Munich is the capital of Bavaria. Likewise the big German truck manufacturer, MAN, is located in Munich. Audi is in Ingolstadt, which is not far away. So cars play a central role in the local industry.
This presence is evident at the Hochschule. In our department a lot of effort has gone into making static display cases highlighting the accomplishments and technologies of local industries. Many of these involve automobiles. There are large displays of chassis parts throughout our building.
Many students do practical semesters at BMW or other German auto designers and manufacturers. I alluded to presentations done by students on their practical work, some having been sent far and wide in the world to support German auto manufacturing overseas. Often work at smaller machine shops and in other industries is done to support the automobile or truck industry. For instance, one student did a talk on a hydraulic lift system by a company that is installed on MAN truck frame to turn them into very large dump trucks. Another student gave two very interesting talks about his practical work with crash test dummys in his testing work with a local industry.
There are many other technologies also evident in the display cases and among the professors and students at the HM. But one of the strongest focal points is land vehicle technology.