"The great aim of education is not knowledge but action." This quotation from English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) encapsulates the Hochschule Weserbergland's most important objective. HSW's strength lies in the interplay of science, instruction, and practical application. Practice-based instruction and research can be realized only through continuous dialogue with enterprises in the business, political, and administrative sectors and educational, research, and cultural institutions. Our instructors serve as necessary, connecting links between the university and professional practice.
A university for cooperative study programs, study programs for working professionals, and continuing education. The strength of HSW lies in its cooperative study programs, which integrate academic study with practical experience. Based on this approach, HSW develops curricula for working professionals that give equal weight to employees' needs and those of business enterprises on a lasting basis. It thereby further develops talent in personal and professional terms in all phases of life and professional practice. An innovative university with research and development for practical application. A functioning and lively transfer of research results have secured a position of importance not only to the region but also on a national and international level. The university's partners benefit from the actively practiced transfer of research results as much as HSW does itself. Further intensification and perpetuation of research transfer is a crucial objective of HSW.
HSW promotes regional development through the national attractiveness under its curricula, advanced training, scientific services, and research. It further consolidates and perpetuates its regional embeddedness through national and international cooperative relationships.
HSW considers its primary task to educate and further training highly qualified people to give and take criticism, a sense of responsibility, and the ability to develop and promote solutions to business-related and social problems independently. HSW is receptive to new target groups following the "open university" principle and combines professional training with a university education. It sees its role as that of a partner in personnel development.
HSW develops innovative solutions for problems encountered in the practical world. The close intermeshing of applied research and practice-related instruction guarantees a high quality of study programs, instruction, and advanced training. For graduates, it opens up excellent opportunities for professional development.
With the strong national appeal of its practice-integrating, cooperative study programs, HSW has become so attractive that most of its students come to the Weser Uplands from other regions. The university's goal is to achieve this sort of attractiveness in applied research. Scientific study and continuing education programs are, along with research and development, the engine of our economic progress in the Weser Uplands region.
Assuring the quality of study programs and instruction is of crucial importance to HSW. This is accomplished both externally, through accreditation agencies, and internally through a comprehensive quality management system.
As a state-approved institution of higher learning, HSW is obliged to submit every new program of studies to review its content and quality and accreditation by agencies explicitly established for that purpose. All studies offered at HSW are accredited by the competent agency, Zentrale Evaluations- und Akkreditierungsagentur (ZEvA) Hannover. Also, HSW must demonstrate that it performs services in instruction and research by accepted scientific standards as an institution of higher learning. This is done through the Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), which successfully granted HSW its institutional accreditation for the first time in 2010, the year in which HSW was founded re-accredited it in 2015. In its 2016 accreditation report, ZEvA highlights HSW's quality management in favorable terms: "HSW's system of quality assurance and further development has already been reviewed in multiple program accreditation procedures and the course of its institutional accreditation by the Council of Science and Humanities. As a result of the associated process of constant further development, it has achieved a high level of maturity and can be described as exemplary."
