Pendleruni - University of Commuters

Dortmund - Part of the Ruhr area

…and that is the reason why so many people take the train or drive by car to go to the university because it is easily accessible from almost the entire Ruhr area and the surrounding areas.

Source: www.elternnetzwerk.nrw.de

That is why the University of Dortmund is called a Pendleruniversität. It means that a big part of the students drive from their homes to university and do not decide to live on campus. This is possible because of the dense network of public transportation and because Dortmund is an easy accessible city from a lot of parts of the Ruhr-area. The map above shows from which parts of North-Rhine Westphalia students decide to study in Dortmund, some of them have to drive one to one and a half hours to get to Dortmund because they daily commute between their home town and the university.

Source: www.tu-dortmund.de

The statistics above shows you how many students come from North-Rhine Westphalia and how many actually live in Dortmund and decide to study in Dortmund. Only a really small number comes from other states in Germany. This also underlines that the University of Dortmund is a “Pendleruniversität” at its best.

In the following you will see two interviews. The first one is from a girl that commutes every day. The second interview is by a girl who decided to live on campus.

Questions:
1) Where do you live?
2) How long does it take you to get to university?
3) What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of being a commuter?

Answers:
1) I live in Herne
2) It takes me 15 minutes to get to Herne’s main station, another 15 minutes to get to Bochum’s main station. Then I take the S1 to Dortmund Universität which also takes about 15 minutes.
3) The big advantage of being a commuter is that I don’t have to pay for an apartment because I still live with my family.
The disadvantage #1 is that it often takes me a long time to get to university because of delayed trains, buses, etc. Moreover, in the beginning of my studies in Dortmund, it was harder to get into contact with other students because I went home after classes straightaway.

Christina, a student from Dortmund


Questions:
1) Where are you originally from?
2) Where do you live at the moment?
3) Why did you decide to live on campus?
4) What do you think are the advantages to live in Dortmund?

Answers:
1) I am from Hagen, that's a quite big city in the Ruhrgebiet.
2) Since 4 semesters I live in a residential accommodation which is on the campus. I share this flat with three other girls who also are students at TU Dortmund.
3) To my mind it is very convenient to live on the campus as you can get to university very fast. I think it is very important to live near the university because you can really enjoy the opportunities that are given on location.
4) There are a lot of advantages. Firstly, you can participate in the sport programmes which are offered here. Secondly, in the morning you can get very fast to the campus and you feel more integrated in what is going on here.

Sonja, a student from Dortmund

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entry by Isabel Weber