Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin

Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin (SHB) (or Steinbeis University) is a private German university, which was founded in 1998The university is based in Berlin, but also owns institutes in Baden-Württemberg.

The university mainly offers extra-occupational study courses. Besides Bachelor and Master programs, there are possibilities to get doctoral degrees. Although the university is mainly offering economic courses, there is also the opportunity to achieve a Bachelor of Engineering.

The main idea of Steinbeis University is the "interdigitation of theory and practice", which means that the students can apply their gained theoretical knowledge directly to their job. Students are usually just accepted together with a sponsoring company, where the students have to work during their "practical training".

The university is wholly owned by the Steinbeis Foundation.

At the beginning of 2014, the university received nationwide criticism after it announced plans to launch a Steinbeis Transfer Institute in Traunstein in September 2014 offering a bachelor's degree in homoeopathy. Critics call it a "disgrace for the science centre of Bavaria". According to the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Pseudoscience (GWUP), the course is "simply an academic misnomer." 

According to the journalist Weymayr, from the Christian Science Monitor, the program was a "training school for medical practitioners" which "glosses over an academic cloak upgraded" with dignity. You talk "from the master and bachelor of college, of, academic, '" says "all the serious degree programs that are committed to academic standards and are based on normal universities, discredited."  The physician Edzard Ernst stated that the programme "does not even meet the minimum of critical thinking and academic integrity". He added that the implementation of such courses was "extremely regrettable - they devalue the Bachelor of Science in all other areas and have nothing to do with science." Against the accreditation of the degree program, a petition to the Senate of Berlin was directed that the College is responsible.

At the beginning of April 2014, Spiegel Online stated that the proposed course of study will not be introduced.