700 students have successfully graduated from Mittweida University of Applied Sciences

With 6,350 enrolled students as at 1 November 2025, Mittweida University of Applied Sciences (HSMW) is, according to official statistics, once again the largest of Saxony’s five Universities of Applied Sciences (UoAS), ahead of the HTWK in Leipzig. Furthermore, following the universities in Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz, HSMW is the fourth-largest higher education institution in Saxony across all types of higher education – even ahead of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Volker Tolkmitt: “What matters is what lies behind this encouraging top ranking: the fact that, despite being at a disadvantage compared with universities and colleges in the major cities, we are able to hold our own so successfully – thanks to our specialist degree programmes and unique opportunities that attract not only students but also lecturers and researchers.”

With regard to the Graduation Ceremony (Feierliche Exmatrikulation) taking place today, Friday 29 May, Tolkmitt added: “I am equally pleased that Mittweida University of Applied Sciences is becoming smaller again as students graduate over the course of the year. This shows that we are fulfilling our core mission: to provide people with an academic education and to send them on their way to a professional or further academic career.”

The HSMW celebrates this graduation in the spring and autumn of each year, tongue-in-cheekly referring to it as the ‘academic send-off’. For today’s Graduation Ceremony (Feierliche Exmatrikulation), around 230 of the 697 graduates from the past winter term had registered to attend with their families. The Evangelical City Church was once again packed to the rafters, and the weather also provided ideal conditions for a spectacular hat-throwing ceremony on Technikumplatz.

Of the 697 graduates from the winter semester, 269 are women (39 per cent) and 216 are international alumni (31 per cent) from 30 countries. HSMW is delighted to have awarded 25 dual degrees, including eight in partnership with its Ukrainian partner university, Odessa National Economic University (ONEU). ONEU’s Vice-Rector, Professor Olexandr Litvinov, personally presented the certificates to his graduates.

The most common degree awarded was a Bachelor’s degree (411). The youngest graduate, aged 21, studied Business Management, whilst the oldest, aged 57, graduated with a degree in IT Forensics/Cybercrime.

Contrary to expectations, the keynote speaker managed to get through his speech without mentioning cybercrime at all: Professor Christian Hummert, Research Director at the federally-owned Agency for Innovation in Cybersecurity GmbH – or ‘Cyberagentur’ for short – encouraged the graduates to forge their own path and not to be afraid of failure. “The fear of failure is the true enemy of creativity,” he quoted the philosopher Charles Pépin (*1973). And, according to Hummert, making new attempts to ‘fail better’ also means that ‘after an argument, we don’t walk away for good, but stay put, listen and explain ourselves’.

Hummert was Professor of IT security and Digital Forensics at the HSMW from 2015 to 2018 and remains associated with the university today as an honorary professor.

The symbolic ‘academic send-off’ by Rector Volker Tolkmitt and the personal ‘conferral’ of degrees on the graduates by their former lecturers were the highlights of the ceremony. Afterwards, the gathering made its way through the town to Technikumplatz in front of the university’s main building, where the black graduation hats – which had only just been put on – were thrown into the air.