University of Salzburg

The University of Salzburg is a public university in the city of Salzburg, in Salzburg State. It is also known as the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, or PLUS, after its founder, Prince-Archbishop Paris Lodron. It is the largest educational institution in the state.

The university was established in 1622, when Archbishop Paris Lodron appointed the scholar Albert Keuslin as its first rector. A secondary school Keuslin had set up in Salzburg five years earlier was raised to a university by resolution of Emperor Ferdinand II. Benedictine abbeys from Salzburg, Switzerland, Bavaria and Austria built up and maintained it while the Thirty Years' War raged outside the archbishopric. Early courses were theology, divinity, philosophy, law and medicine. The university was closed in 1810 after Salzburg was annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria and replaced by a Lyzeum college, and it was not re-established until 1962, with a faculty of Catholic theology and a faculty of philosophy. Classes resumed in 1964 and a law faculty followed the next year. It now has around 18,000 students and 2,800 employees, and is divided into six faculties: Catholic Theology, Law and Economics, Cultural Sciences, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Analytical and Life Sciences.

There is no central campus. Teaching takes place in several buildings in the historic centre, including parts of the Salzburg Residenz (the Toskanatrakt) and buildings on Kapitelgasse south of the cathedral. The university library sits between the Kollegienkirche and the Großes Festspielhaus, with the Große Aula attached. The humanities faculty building is by the Rudolfskai, the Faculty of Sciences just further south, and the Unipark Nonntal campus, completed in 2011, houses modern languages and cultural and social sciences. Arts and music are taught at the Mozarteum University Salzburg.

The national register lists 141 programmes of all kinds and languages at the university, 18 of them taught in English, all at Master's level. Subjects taught include Education, Information Technology, Materials Engineering, Science, Data Science, Ecology, Social Sciences and Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, Political Science, Communication and Media, Computer Science and IT, Geology and Molecular Biology.

For an international student, the practical points are these. You apply directly to the university. Students from outside the EU and EEA need a Residence Permit for Students. At public universities, EU, EEA and Swiss students pay no tuition within the standard duration of study plus two semesters, while most other students pay a per-semester fee. Every student also pays the student union fee.