From 1991 to 1994, he studied business administration at the Hochschule Niederrhein, specialising in marketing and data processing. He describes his studies as "extremely analog". Back then, lectures were not uploaded to an Internet platform such as "Moodle"; instead, you had to purchase hard copies of the lecture notes at the beginning of the semester. Information in the lecture was written on the blackboard with chalk or recorded on slides and then "thrown" on the wall via overhead projector. And you couldn't find out your grades in your student account; instead, you had to line up in the rooms of your faculty to look for your grade in the posted lists. Looking back, this had its own charm, but it also shows why Thomas Knops calls digitization the greatest opportunity, but also the greatest challenge, of our century. After earning his degree, Thomas Knops had immediately gained a foothold in the professional world, and the practical orientation of topics at Hochschule Niederrhein played its part. He attributes the fact that he would go into the marketing field to Prof. Dr. Kortus-Schulte and Prof. Dr. Weis, among others, who got him interested in this subject early on in his studies. He has always maintained contact with the university, e.g. by assigning diploma theses to students or by taking over courses. Since 2010, he has been working as a contract lecturer at the Hochschule Niederrhein as part of the career-integrated Master's program in Leadership & Management, pursuing the approach of teaching the topics in the module "International Marketing" in a practical and concrete manner. If he were to study again, he would choose Business Information Systems and then the career-integrated Master's program in Management & Leadership. In any case, he can then compare what has changed compared to his typical "first" student life with Thursday evenings at the "Richard Wagner", student parties of the "Textiler", daily lunch in the canteen, free hours in the café "Trotzdem", math scripts (still with jokes from the 80s), small study groups and side jobs during the semester breaks. Perhaps the conclusion then will be again: "Simply a great time!"
