Biography | Thomas Schäfer — The Dual Diploma Taken on Coblitzallee

People treat a German car chief as a graduate of a Technische Universität.

His first engineering paper came from a Berufsakademie that shared him with Daimler.

From 1991 to 1994 Schäfer studied mechanical engineering and production technology on a dual contract.

The classroom half sat here, at what was then Berufsakademie Mannheim.

The campus on Coblitzallee in Neuostheim now carries the name DHBW Mannheim.

The Hochschule title arrived only on 1 March 2009.

In 1994 the award was still a Berufsakademie diploma, issued while he rotated through Daimler plants.

Volkswagen's own curriculum says he entered the industry through that dual program and graduated in mechanical engineering in 1994.

Daimler and Bosch had helped invent the model in the 1970s so apprentices could study without leaving the factory floor.

The Coblitzallee buildings a visitor sees today are later expansions of that 1974 experiment.

His practice half was not on this pavement.

It ran through Daimler production and quality rooms in Germany, then the United States and South Africa.

The pin is the school that kept the theory half in Mannheim while the company paid the wage.

Photo: Open day on the DHBW Mannheim campus, copyrighted free use, via Wikimedia Commons