Kaiserslautern University

Population: 99 280 inhabitants Surface: 139,73 km² Unemployment rate: 5.9% Kaiserslautern is located in the southern part of the state Rhineland-Palatinate, in southwest of Germany. Today, around 99,800 people live in the City of Kaiserslautern. The County of Kaiserslautern has a population of 104,600 people. The population growth as well as the development of the region was decades-long driven by the manufacturing industry, especially the textile and sewing machine industry. After the Second World War, which destroyed two third of the city, the American army founded the Military Air Base Ramstein and maintains several barracks in and nearby Kaiserslautern. At the current time about 48.000 US-American people living in and nearby the city of Kaiserslautern. Accordingly, the US-Army has become an important employer in the region of Kaiserslautern. Moreover, in the early sixty a major automobile company opened the doors and is till now one of the largest employer in the region. With an upcoming tertiarization in connection with a loss of importance of the manufacturing sector, the region of Kaiserslautern is affected by an economic structural change. The first milestone to step in a knowledge-based development of the region was the foundation of the Technical University in 1970. Since that time more and more research and development institutions settled in and nearby Kaiserslautern. Based on that dynamic development the numbers of start-ups, especially in the IT-branches, is increasing.