Where There Is Potential for Savings

Austria Funds Programs with Just Five Students

Some lecture halls at Austria’s universities are practically empty.(Bild: Anke Thomass/stock.adobe.com)

The planned cuts to university budgets have sparked a veritable wave of outrage. A look behind the scenes, however, reveals that there is significant potential for savings at universities. For example, Austria funds programs with as few as five students. Streamlining is the order of the day.

Five students are currently enrolled in the master’s program in Slavic Studies at the University of Klagenfurt. At the University of Innsbruck, there are twelve. In total, Slavic Studies is offered at four universities.

“We have 77 institutions and 3,600 degree programs. Many of them are very small and far from reaching a critical mass. We need to assess which programs make sense where,” says NEOS science spokesperson Martina Künsberg-Sarre in an interview with the “Krone.”

The goal is not to eliminate individual fields of study, “but rather to consolidate programs, set priorities, and sharpen the profiles of the individual institutions.”

Künsberg-Sarre wants to make the universities “ready for the future.”(Bild: Philipp Simonis)

19 students in the master’s program in chemistry
Further examples: At the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz, fewer than 100 students are studying architecture at both the master’s and bachelor’s levels. At TU Wien and BOKU, 19 students each are completing a master’s degree in chemistry.

On the other hand, in some fields, the job market is practically flooded with graduates. These include journalism and media studies. This discipline can be studied at several universities of applied sciences and traditional universities. In addition, some academies also offer journalism programs. Hundreds of journalists are trained each year, even though there is absolutely no demand for them in the job market.

The bachelor’s program in Mass Communication and Media Studies at the University of Vienna alone currently has around 2,600 students enrolled. There are 970 spots available each year.

Universities rarely appear in rankings; MedUni is an exception
An international comparison shows that Austria spends a relatively large amount of money on its universities. In terms of GDP share, we rank second in the EU; in terms of spending per student (27,000 euros per year per student), we rank fourth. However, Austria’s universities cannot keep up in the excellence rankings.

For the second year in a row, the University of Vienna is the only Austrian university in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, coming in at No. 95. MedUni Vienna also deserves special mention: In the recently published 2026 Ranking by Subject, it ranked 84th in the “Medical and Health” subject group, placing it among the world’s top 100 in that category.