Student Barometer Insights
Insights from the Student Barometer
The first impression of an employer brand is formed where students truly experience it. Since 2024, the Student Barometer has shown how these points of contact are changing.
Conducted annually at several German universities, this empirically grounded survey shows how students perceive employers, what they are looking for, and what ultimately determines their choice. The study uses standardized questionnaires and representative samples, revealing not just snapshots of opinion but reliable trends in the target group’s information channels, expectations, and preferences. This knowledge is especially valuable to us as a higher education marketing agency in providing our clients with targeted advice.
The focus is on STEM students, a key target group for many companies. STEM students bring highly sought-after skills and start actively exploring the job market early in their studies. What matters is not only where information is available, but how it is experienced. Personal encounters on campus, insights into real workplace cultures, and direct conversations with employees often leave a stronger impression than purely online messaging.
The latest survey, the 2025 Student Barometer, takes a closer look at this: it suggests that an on-site presence with tangible value, for example through practical entry-level opportunities and meaningful support in students’ daily lives, plays a key role, and that digital and physical channels need to work together effectively rather than compete with one another. At the same time, one thing remains unchanged: students value tangible benefits such as a motivating environment, fair conditions, and intellectually challenging tasks. These are all factors that employer brands need to demonstrate credibly before students make their decisions.
Learn more about your target group and request all the Student Barometer results!
A brief overview of the findings from 2024 and 2025:
The 2024 Student Barometer shows:
Earlier, closer, more personal: The campus is the leading “experience space”
The finding:
68% of STEM students actively seek information about employers early in their studies. The main sources are the internet (82.5%), career websites (52.8%), and peers/social circles (51.5%). Advertising on campus triggers targeted information searches (43.1%), almost as much as social media (40.9%).
Practical takeaway:
Students “test” employer brands early, before traditional “conversion signals” (applications, CV uploads) can be measured. The campus experience stands out for its unique atmosphere, the approachability of company employees, and the way it makes a brand “tangible.” Digital channels cannot create these things.
The 2025 Student Barometer shows:
Credibility and value: An on-site presence works best when it enables something
The finding:
An employer presence on campus is clearly welcomed (87.6%). Students are most interested in practical entry-level opportunities such as working student jobs and internships (81.3%), followed by sponsorship of student projects (45.5%), career training (44.5%), and workshops (42.3%).
Practical takeaway:
An on-site presence is credible when it is linked to concrete value: real entry-level opportunities are better received than purely brand-focused messaging. Campaigns should therefore put valuable formats (internships, working student jobs, project sponsorship, training) at the center and deliberately coordinate digital and physical touchpoints rather than positioning them against each other.
A look ahead to the next Student Barometer
After one Student Barometer comes the next: in June, we will launch the next round of surveys on campus. This time, the focus is on “artificial intelligence,” a topic that is currently shaping young people’s lives in particular. We will look at the role of AI in students’ daily lives, skills development, and career decisions. The result: advice based not on assumptions but on evidence, with clear recommendations on channels, messaging, and timing to make higher education marketing and employer branding measurably more effective.
»Knowledge is the most powerful lever in marketing. The Student Barometer gives us deep insights into everyday campus life, helping us deliver messages where they truly resonate.«
Areti Karathanasi, �
Managing Director
Deutsche Hochschulwerbung
About the Student Barometer
The Student Barometer is an annual, representative survey of STEM students at eleven German universities. It systematically examines how young academic talent obtains information about employers, what they expect from career entry opportunities, and which factors shape their career decisions. The surveys are based on quantitative, standardized online studies, with samples of 579 participants in 2024 and 508 participants in 2025. Both surveys follow a clearly defined social science methodology: they use structured questionnaires, draw on representative samples of students in STEM fields, and collect detailed information on semesters, university types, information sources such as poster advertising or DOOH, and attitudes to provide robust, empirically substantiated findings.
Would you like deeper insights into the Student Barometer results? Feel free to get in touch!
