The University of Osnabrück is a public university located in the city of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony, Germany. In 2010 it was attended by 9,298 students. In 2009, the staff of 1,570 consisted of 214 professors, 662 additional academic personnel (lecturers without professorships, post-doctoral researchers and post-graduate assistants) and 694 non-academic personnel . The university is known for a large number of interdisciplinary degree programmes, some of them rare or even unique among German universities, including European Studies, Applied Systems Science and Cognitive Science. The University of Osnabrück, through its MA in Democratic Governance and Civil Society graduate program, is also part of the highly-prestigious DAAD Public Policy and Good Governance consortium, along with other reputable institutions in political science and public policy such as the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy in Erfurt. Higher education began in 1632 in Osnabrück with the foundation of the Academia Carolina Osnabrugensis, but this institution was closed a year later as Swedish troops occupied Osnabrück during the Thirty Years' War.