A cooperative model for engineering education

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits acts as a link between university and industry on various levels. Most of the emphasis is on the innovation process and technology transfer from university to industry. In this paper it becomes obvious that the way industry operates in terms of the work done by professional engineers, has influence on the university by that link, and students accept it as a challenge for their education and even contribute in many ways to make this link effective. So, in a similar way as apprentices learnt from their masters already in the medieval ages, students learn form experienced professionals by working with and for them. In addition, the requirements from industrial work feed back to the university and lead to additional research projects, teaching activities even beyond the local university and beyond electronics which is the main field of competence of IIS staff.