One to two years after de-registration is enough time for most of the former students to have reorientated themselves at this point. They are either enrolled in another degree programme, in vocational training or have gained their first professional experience. Besides providing information on the reasons for de-registration, respondents can also retrospectively evaluate the discontinued degree programme from their current perspective, as well as their new degree programme or their transition to working life.

In addition to the main reasons for de-registration, the evaluation of the discontinued degree programme and the higher education institution, the questionnaire collects information regarding the situation of the respondents before and during their studies, as well as after de-registration from their studies at TU Darmstadt.

Filling in the questionnaire on a mobile phone is possible. However, due to the length of some of the response options, not all of the questions will be optimally displayed. We therefore recommend filling in the questionnaire on a tablet, laptop or PC.

The questionnaire can be left at any time and continued at a later date by re-entering the individual PIN. All responses are saved as soon as you leave a page using the 'Forward' or 'Back' buttons. The questionnaire can be completed until the end of the survey period.

There may be several reasons for this:

Your de-registration did not take place within the defined period: Only former students who left TU Darmstadt between October 2022 and September 2023 are invited to take part in the survey.

No current address is available: In some cases, address research can be time-consuming. Sometimes an invitation can only be sent out after the survey has officially commenced. In rare cases, no valid address can be found until the end of the survey period (e.g. when a former student has moved abroad).

You have dropped out of a degree programme but are still enrolled in another one at TU Darmstadt: Only former students who left the university are invited to participate in the survey.

You have dropped out of a cooperative degree programme: Former students of cooperative degree programmes that are not administered at TU Darmstadt are not surveyed.

You have dropped out of a degree programme that is being phased out: There may not be a survey for this degree programme.

The lawfulness of processing personal data for the purpose of evaluation is laid down in Article 6 (1e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (Datenschutz-Grundverordnung – DS-GVO). These requirements are specified in § 12 (7) of the Hessian Higher Education Act (Hessisches Hochschulgesetz – HHG). Objection to the use of the address data is possible at any time.

All students provide their address data when first enrolling at the TU Darmstadt. The data of the former students of the defined period of de-registration is extracted from TUCaN and stored in a secure manner. All address data is accessible only to the responsible staff members of the Center for Educational Development and Technology (HDA) and will be deleted once the survey is completed. Data in non-electronic form will be destroyed. The address data is not passed to our cooperation partner Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT) or any other third parties.

Since the available postal addresses are often outdated at the time the survey is conducted, they are updated on the basis of population register data. Some postal and email addresses are obtained with the help of the Offices for Student Affairs and the Departmental Offices, provided the graduates have not objected to the disclosure of their email address for the purpose of the survey.

No information about the respondents (e.g. IP address) is saved and no cookies are installed on their devices.

The survey data is cleansed by our cooperation partner Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT) and transferred to the Center for Educational Development and Technology (HDA). Additionally, as part of the project Study Programmes and Professions in Hesse, an anonymised overall data set of all participating Hessian universities will be compiled.

The survey data serves the quality development of study and teaching at the TU Darmstadt. It helps to initiate developments and expansions of study and support programmes and service facilities. The anonymised overall data set of all participating Hessian higher education institutions is compiled as part of the project Study Programmes and Professions in Hesse. It is used to report on higher education policy issues.

• TU-internal analyses:
  Depending on the survey participation, the results will be analysed by the Center for Educational Development and Technology (HDA) at university level, subject group level and/or degree programme level. Analyses can also be prepared for specific subgroups. Data on the response rate and representativeness is processed in a methodology report.
• Hesse-wide analyses:
  From the data obtained within the framework of the project Study Programmes and Professions in Hesse, our cooperation partner Institute for Applied Statistics (ISTAT) produces a state report for the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts, as well as reports at the level of the individual higher education institutions for all institutions involved.