This seems to be slightly confusing to me, because the regulations state that the job that a foreign student graduated from a Germany university can take "should be related to his/her field of study" which seems a bit vague. If I hold a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science (classification A3), but later do a master's degree in another field (Master of Arts), can I still land a job as software engineer/"IT specialist" using my bachelor's degree as qualification? I think there shouldn't be any reason that the job has to be restricted by the graduate degree only, but I'm not totally sure about it. Also, a personnel from DAAD in my region gave me some confusing replies as well(he told me to ask the diploma-offering university in Germany for clarification).
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How did you solve this in the end? Can you put in a self-answer here?– mtsJul 28, 2017 at 6:14
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@mts The field of my current master's degree is still in some way related to the bachelor's degree (which is actually normally a requirement to get admission in the first place in Germany), so sorry, I guess I can't provide an answer here. Maybe it would be best to ask the related authority yourself, since the regulations might also vary a lot across different regions/cities, as the local authorities have quite some power of discretion in issuing the work visa.– xjiJul 28, 2017 at 10:34
1 Answer
You write "the regulations state that the job that a foreign student graduated from a Germany university can take "should be related to his/her field of study". What regulations are that?
If the regulation under which you are currently allowed to live and study in Germany is § 16 Aufenthaltsgesetz (AufenthG) in your case, I cannot find any regulation as to what field you are allowed to work in. It just states that you may not work for more then 120 days / year as a general rule.
Believe it or not, law is more logical in Germany than one may think. Just get used to asking youself what the abuse of a law mihght be and you usually understand better what the idea behind a law is.
In this case it's: If they would allow you to work full-time 365 days a year, please could easily circumvent any working visa and just register as a student in a German university (which would by the way provide some more goodies) but never actually study at all. It would take at least one year, in practice rather 2-3 years before the university would kick you out and as a result you'd loose your visa. And this is what they don't want. On the other hand they don't want to limit to opportunity to study to those who bring enough money to sustain their living in Germany for several years without any income. Thus the compromise that they allow you to work for 120 days / years which will hopefully be enough to cover your cost and leaves enough time for actually studying.
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Maybe you misunderstood my original question. It was about work after graduation, not while during the study. Anyways I do believe the laws shouldn't be as inflexible as that, and if a company wants to hire you in whatever field they should be able to do so without being confined by the actual degree you obtained. However I remember reading something that explicitly states the degree that you obtained matters in this case, thus the question.– xjiAug 9, 2017 at 9:04
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You may also refer to this question here: expatriates.stackexchange.com/questions/7079/… Sources do state that you will need certain degrees to work in Germany. For example a company can't just hire somebody who doesn't have any kind of proof of qualification from abroad. That's what my question was about.– xjiAug 9, 2017 at 9:05
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@JIXiang Yes, I completely misunderstood your question. But that might be due to the part "if I do a Master's Degree there in another field". I understood you have a bachelor in A and you are currently doing your masters in B and would like to work aside.– TorstenSAug 9, 2017 at 11:51