Lucerne Campus for Refugees PLUS (CLuG+) Your preparation for studying at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the University of Lucerne or the University of Teacher Education Lucerne

The aim of CLuG+ is to offer ambitious people with a refugee background who are already living in Switzerland prospects for the future by preparing them for studying at a Swiss university. This will provide new skilled workers for the tight labour market in Switzerland. In addition, structured and constructive cooperation between participants, authorities, companies and universities should lead to a win-win situation for everyone involved. 

CLuG+ has a modular structure so that refugees in different stages of their lives can benefit from this bridging programme. The first stage is the taster programme. This programme is aimed at refugees whose German language level is B1 and who would like to get an idea of what it is like to study at a Swiss university. The pre-study integration programme, the second stage, is aimed at people who have already achieved a German language level of B2 and are specifically aiming to study at a Swiss university. The third stage is for refugees who are completing a regular study programme at one of the three participating universities. They can seek guidance from mentors during their studies as part of CLuG+. 

The programme is aimed at people with a residence permit B (refugee), F, S or N. As part of the taster or pre-study integration programme they can attend German language courses, selected modules as guest or specialist auditors at one of the three universities and benefit from a mentoring programme. 

Further information on the individual offers and their content can be found under the links below. 

In order to provide our participants with the best possible support we rely on mentors. As a mentor - a regular student or employee of one of the three universities - you will meet with your mentee once a week during the semester to support them with everyday challengs and, above all, to speak German. Of course, you are also welcome to take part in the further events organised by Lucerne Campus for Refugees. Mentors are introduced to mentoring by Annina Friz, lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Social Work. 

Would you like to mentor one of our participants? Please contact us at campusgefluechtete@hslu.ch. Further information on our mentoring programme as well as important dates of the academic year 2025/26, can be found on our factsheet "Mentoring as Part of the Pre-Study Integration Programme for Refugees" (only available in German).

CLuG+ is not only aimed at potential participants in one of its programmes. The three universities involved also aim at intensifying and better structuring cooperation with the various actors involved at the intersection between asylum-seeking and higher education: refugees, authorities, companies and universities wishing to integrate refugees into Swiss society and the labour market as sustainably as possible. 

Further information on this topic will follow at a later date. 

The financial support from our funding partner - Perspectives-Studies - has enabled us to set up the Lucerne Campus for Refugees and drive it forward in its first few years. Furthermore, Perspectives-Studies is supporting the creation of a research-based accompanying study which will analyse the internal and external interfaces, record the needs of the stakeholder groups and thus contribute to the improvement of existing offers and processes (e.g. admission interviews, mentoring, langauge courses, guest student moduels). A particular concern is to investigate success factors and obstacles to the successful implementation of our pre-study integration programme for refugees. The study is being conducted by Dr Rebecca Mörgen, University of Duisburg-Essen (formerly working at the Lucerne School of Social Work). 

From 2025 to 2028, CLuG+ will also receive financial support from swissuniversities. As part of the project-related contributions (PgB) action line "Exploiting potential - equal opportunities for refugees to access higher education", CLuG+ receives financial support for the further development, improvement and sustainable continuation of the project.