14. Master's Degree or Further Training

You only need to read the following section if you already have a school-based vocational qualification or a university degree before you start your studies. In this case, it is important whether you have completed a training program that is generally eligible for funding under BAföG (e.g. vocational school, technical school). In-company training (apprenticeship) is irrelevant.

Training assistance for a single further training course is provided, among other things, up to a maximum of a vocationally qualifying degree,

• if it supplements a university education or an equivalent education according to state law to the extent that this is legally required for taking up the desired profession (e.g. psychotherapist training after completing a master's degree in psychology for the profession of psychotherapist) or
• if access to it has been opened in connection with the previous training, it is independent in itself and continues in the same professional direction (e.g. educator after social pedagogical assistant training) or
• if a specialized secondary school class, the attendance of which requires a completed vocational training, an evening high school or a college was attended and this is an access requirement for the further training (e.g. study after evening high school) or
• if the entrance requirements for the further education to be supported were acquired through a non-student examination or an entrance examination to a higher education institution, or
• if students have completed, as their first vocational training, at least three years of training at a vocational school or in a technical school whose attendance does not require completed vocational training (e.g. study after graduating from a technical school for fashion design) or
• if you have earned a bachelor's degree and then begin a master's program. No immediate further study is required after the bachelor's degree unless you are under 45 years of age when you begin the master's program. It does not matter whether the degree was obtained at a university or university of applied sciences, in Germany or abroad. If you have only been provisionally enrolled for the master's program by the university because you have not yet received your bachelor's degree certificate, funding will be provided subject to recovery until final admission.
  
  

A Master's degree is funded if it builds on a Bachelor's degree, even if you have more than one Bachelor's degree. Funding is also possible if the basic entitlement has not yet been exhausted - you have not yet completed any eligible training and have been admitted directly to the Master's program on the basis of artistic ability without a Bachelor's degree.

If, for example, you have been admitted to a master's program on the basis of a diploma degree, BAföG funding is no longer possible.

Apart from that, educational support for a single further education is only provided if the special circumstances of the individual case, in particular the intended educational goal, make this necessary. You can obtain detailed advice on this from our administrative staff.