Here you will learn more about people and milestones in the 120-year old history of the University.
Over 100 years of the University of St.Gallen (HSG): from a business academy to an academically renowned and internationally connected business university.
The University of St.Gallen (HSG) is one of the oldest business schools there are and was the first of its kind to be founded in Switzerland. It was founded in 1898, when the Grand Council of the Canton of St.Gallen decided to establish an "academy for trade, traffic and administration " in the city of St.Gallen. The politician and publicist Theodor Curti (1848-1914) is considered the man who played a key role in pushing forward an ambitious agenda of estab-lishing a business academy in St.Gallen.
The purpose of the business school was to better educate the next generation of businessmen for the textile industry in eastern Switzerland. The beginnings were very modest. The school started in 1899 with only seven enrolled students and 85 listeners. Classes were held in the west wing of the “Kantonsschule am Burggraben”, where the business school had taken up residence.
The demand for business education in St.Gallen grew rapidly. Due to increasing student numbers, the school had to move twice. In 1911 classes were moved to the specially built new building at Notkerstrasse 20, and the business academy became a business college (‘Handelshochschule’). In 1963 the school moved to the current main location on the Rosen-berg. The campus was built in the brutalist style by architect Walter Förderer (1928-2006). After 1962, the name Hochschule St.Gallen für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften (HSG) was adopted, and the abbreviation ‘HSG’ has been used ever since to refer to the University.
Although formally HSG had already been on an equal footing with universities since 1938, when it obtained the right to award doctorates, it was not before 1995 that the school was renamed University of St.Gallen (HSG). The University has often played a pioneering role in the further development of academic education: in 1968 it was the first university in Switzerland to introduced and institutionalise executive education programmes, in 2000 it pioneered in implementing the Bologna Process (initiated throughout Europe in 1999), and in 2003 HSG launched the first Children's University programme in Switzerland. At the same time the scope of research and the range of academic offer have also successively expanded. Today, HSG’s full name is University of St.Gallen - School of Business, Law, Social Sciences, International Relations and Computer Science (HSG).
