Despite rapid growth, a handful of high-profile bankruptcies and financial problems have hit the private sector in recent years. “People don’t do it for fun,” said Ms Lees. Extensive market research on student demand is normally carried out before new ins

2019, a report from the German Academic Exchange Service.

When students first arrive at SRH, teaching groups are small enough that academics can take them out together for a drink, Bert Eichhorn, vice- president of international affairs at SRH, told Times Higher Education during a visit to the campus. At public universities, meanwhile, packed lecture halls and uncontactable professors with hundreds of students have become a cliché – fair or not.

Because private universities are “much smaller”, the “professor-student relationship is better than in public universities”, said Ms Frank. Dropout rates tend to be much lower, she added.

Another reason for private universities’ expansion is that they have been “very smart” at carving out “niche” courses that public universities simply do not offer, she explained.

One such example is Hamburg’s Kühne Log i s t i c s University, explained Piret Lees, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Association of Private Universities. The university was started by the eponymous logistics giant because no other institution was offering sufficiently specialised courses.

But claims that private universities have better links with employers are arguably a “myth”, said Ms Frank: survey data show that companies like to recruit from both public and private institutions. “It’s marketing,” she said.

How much does all this cost? There are no recent figures on average private fees in Germany, and Ms Lees stressed that costs vary widely depending on course and location. Like UK universities, SRH Berlin charges more for students outside the EU – 10,800 (£9,559) per year for an engineering master’s – than for EU students, who pay 9,360.

One reason it is possible to charge non-EU students more is that outside Europe private universities are synonymous with good quality, an idea less familiar to Europeans, said Professor Eichhorn.

Students are often able to get special loans – sometimes offered by the universities themselves – that they pay back with a fixed percentage of their post-graduation income above a certain threshold, explained Ms Lees.

Despite rapid growth, a handful of high-profile bankruptcies and financial problems have hit the private sector in recent years. “People don’t do it for fun,” said Ms Lees. Extensive market research on student demand is normally carried out before new institutions are set up.

The majority of private universities are non-profit, according to Ms Frank’s most recent analysis. With more than 1,000 students, private universities are typically financially viable, she estimated, although if they want to do serious research as well as teaching, they need the backing of a foundation behind them.

Yet for all their success, some observers feel that private universities might be losing their edge, as public universities catch up in offering flexible continuous education to people already in work, said Ms Frank. “Some of the USPs they had in 2010 are not so strong anymore,” she said.