About Us

Since 1949 Austria participates in the IAESTE program, whereby the exchange program was carried out by ÖKISTA.
At the end of the 80s a dedicated group of students from TU Vienna established, with the goal to increase the number of internships in Austria. In addition to more internships, company contacts, an international study fair and the first career fair (22.November 1989) were organized. In order to support the voluntary work of the students a board of trustees with representatives from science, business and politics was founded to supervise the association.

The success spoke for the initiators. Motivated through this, the IAESTE spirit was spreaded at other technical universities, which had the result that other committees were soon founded. During this initial period, regular meetings were held with ÖKISTA and the ÖKISTA curators, which aimed to achieve a student-run IAESTE. More IAESTE Local committees at BOKU, TU Graz and TU Leoben were founded and IAESTE Austria was now student-runned.
The final independence of IAESTE led by students became reality in January 1992 with the official founding of the Austrian umbrella organization IAESTE Austria. Shortly afterwards the Local committees in Linz and Innsbruck were built. The infrastructure was provided by the universities as well as by the National Union of students. Recognition as a legitimate successor to ÖKISTA was achieved at the international level one year later at the General Conference in Cork, Ireland. The success of the student idea can be measured by the fact that the voluntarily active students in Austria were already able to triple the number of practice places in a year.
The success in Austria was also transferred to neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia . Also here equally successful organizations were established. Within the first two years, four international seminars and conferences were organized by IAESTE Austria (Post Seminar Conference of the 5th SID in Vienna, 1st Nationalconvention in Modre in June 92, Marketing Conference in Winter 92/93 in Graz, 7th SID in Annaberg). At this time Austria began to become more important to student run organizations on international level.
When the first generation change came the “IAESTE Oldies” emerged and were then the first “IAESTE Austria Alumni”, that were already active in their profession and helped then IAESTE with the future active members.