DAAD President Prof. Dr Joybrato Mukherjee explained at the presentation of the report:
"The past year was not an easy one for international academic exchange and the DAAD - and yet it was a successful one. The geopolitical situation has changed, cooperation with China has become more challenging and more consultation-intensive, Russia's war against Ukraine continued and the re-election of Donald Trump as US President was a signal for unforeseeable developments in the future. At the same time, we at the DAAD were able to grant funding to 104 universities for their specialist projects, launch an EU programme for threatened researchers together with partners and look back on the successes of a quarter of a century of Bologna reforms."
In these times, Germany remains a popular destination for international students and researchers: Around 400,000 students and doctoral candidates as well as around 75,000 academics from abroad underline this success and are an asset for the science location. This puts Germany in third place worldwide for international students and second place for academics, surpassed only by the USA. In this situation, the DAAD and its member universities have once again succeeded in maintaining academic exchange and scientific cooperation at a high level.
Stable production figures in turbulent times
In 2024, the DAAD supported 140.925 students, graduates, researchers and university staff worldwide - a figure at the same high level as the previous year. Most of the funding recipients received financial support via the EU Erasmus+ programme (around 50.200 people), followed by programmes funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFTR, 38.300 people), the Federal Foreign Office (36.800 people) and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ, 14.700 people).
In total, the DAAD sponsored 73.394 people from Germany and 67.531 from abroad. The most popular destination countries for DAAD funding recipients from Germany were Spain, France and Italy. Most international scholarship holders came from Ukraine, India and Egypt. The proportion of women was 51 per cent among international and 60 per cent among German scholarship holders
Focus on China, Ukraine and skilled labour programme
At the beginning of 2024, the DAAD published a strategy paper on China - based on the German government's China strategy. It sets out five guiding principles for dealing with the emerging science superpower in terms of foreign science policy and provides universities with guidelines for concrete implementation.
Another focus in 2024 was on Ukraine: the DAAD announced the funding of two new Ukraine Centres in Germany, collected around 1 million EUR in private donations for its Ukraine projects, reopened its office in Kyjiw at the end of August and launched the call for proposals for a new German-Ukrainian university network.
At the same time, the BMFTR-funded DAAD Specialist Staff Initiative picked up speed: With almost 12.000 scholarship holders, it was already the DAAD's single programme with the highest number of participants in 2024. The initiative aims to prepare international students for the German labour market - and, in cooperation with universities and industry, enable more international graduates to start their careers in Germany.
DAAD in figures
In 2024, 1.220 employees in Bonn, Berlin and 56 DAAD offices abroad worked for academic exchange. Around 350 lecturers taught at universities worldwide with DAAD funding. Last year, the DAAD budget totalled around 753 million EUR. Since 1950, the DAAD has supported a total of 1,8 million students and researchers from Germany and 1,3 million people from abroad in their academic careers.
The report will be published in English later this year. The latest annual reports are available here.
Further Reading
- DAAD (20.05.2025): Academic exchange defies global uncertainty - DAAD draws a positive balance for 2024
- DAAD (20.05.2025): Annual Report 2024 (German)
