Academy and Studying in Germany

Unicum is part of everyday life at German universities, like the student canteen and exam nerves. Nearly every student has once had the magazine with the red logo in his hand. Reading it is free of charge and worth the while: for 25 years Unicum has reported on everything concerning student life.

By the beginning of the 1980s, Manfred Baldschus had had enough of the „ideological student magazines” of the time. In a Bochum dormitory, he and fellow students worked together on an alternative idea. The appearance of Unicum in 1983, with the title story „Exams for the Shelf?” was the beginning of an impressive success story that continues today. Confined to North Rhine-Westphalian universities and to seven issues per year in 1984, Unicum now appears in an edition of 415,000 copies monthly and nation-wide. It is distributed at 3,200 places and has about 600,000 readers per issue.

The discovery of students

„Back then, most student magazines were concerned with ideological subjects”, says Uwe Heinrich, spokesman for Unicum Publishing, founded in 1985. Imperialism – yes or no? What is good for South America? These were the questions to which most leftist magazines then distributed at German universities addressed themselves, from a decidedly political point of view. The idea of Unicum, on the other hand, was to concentrate on student life and its specific problems: Are student loans sufficient? What is an enrolment limit? How high is the cost of living in various cities? „Unicum adopted a new point of view”, emphasises Heinrich. „It concerned itself with everyday student life and offered concrete advice.”

The now twenty-five year old concept is still a success. Reports on campus life, university politics and tips for starting professional life are given as much space as varied articles on lifestyle. The spectrum of subjects ranges from fashion and furnishings to the choice of the most popular professor in Germany or the best university canteen. The print edition has been supplemented by an online edition, in which practical subjects come even more to the fore, including an information board for work placement, jobs and university place swapping.

In the midst of everyday university life

> In the meantime there are fifty colleagues working for Unicum Publishing at its building in Bochum. Founding fathers Manfred Baldschus and Hermann-Josef Billstein still direct the business. In addition to the permanent staff there are about one hundred freelancers, including many students who report on their everyday experiences. „Many of our freelancers are students who want to work later in media professions”, says speaker Heinrich. They receive training from Unicum editors and so acquire their first professional experience. Thanks to this network of freelancers, the editorial staff has succeeded in finding subjects of great interest to their target group.

Unicum Publishing blazed new paths not only editorially but also in distribution. „The idea was to bring the magazine where our target group congregates: on campus.” By comparison with other free magazines such as Uni-Spiegel or Zeit Campus, which have adopted the editorial concept of Unicum but are still available mainly only at news stands, Unicum’s approach to distribution has clearly brought it more readers.

Unicum Publishing

The publishers have applied the success formula of Unicum to other magazines. In the meantime the Bochum publishing house publishes five magazines whose target groups dovetail with that of their student magazine. Unicum Abi is addressed to school pupils from fourteen years of age on and is distributed free of charge, like Unicum, at schools where pupils are preparing for their school-leaving examination. Unicum Beruf is then aimed at future and young working university graduates. Here the focus is on job and career themes – again embedded in a colourful mixture of lifestyle articles. Finally, Unicum Publishing brings out UniQueen and UniKing, bi-annual supplements for women and men to its student magazine.

Not least thanks to this variety, Unicum has remained unique in times of growing competition.