South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences
university in Germany
The South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences (German: Fachhochschule Südwestfalen) is a research institution located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 14,000 students, it is one of the largest of its kind in North Rhine-Westphalia. The headquarters and one of its four campuses are in Iserlohn. It has three more campuses located in Hagen, Meschede and Soest and a subsidiary in Lüdenscheid.
It offers a total of about 52 bachelor and master courses in the fields of Engineering, Natural Sciences, Information Technology, Business management and Agriculture.
It offers courses for both full-time students and for those in employment. It also accommodates those who wish to combine vocational training with studies.
History
The oldest forerunner of the university was the trade school in Hagen, founded by the Prussian reform politician Beuth on 1 December 1824, for the qualification for the Berlin Royal Technical Institute, which later became the State Engineering School for Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering, and then the Märkische Fachhochschule, based in Iserlohn and the two locations Iserlohn and Hagen.
The Fachhochschule was founded on January 1, 2002, when the entire university education was disbanded in North Rhine-Westphalia and the Märkische Fachhochschule with the Fachhochschulabschaltungen Meschede and Soest of the former Gesamthochschule Paderborn was united as an equal partner. Seat of the Fachhochschule is Iserlohn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1259168. VIAF identifies the subject as 139328290. The Library of Congress control number is n2010042286. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1824 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.