The Higher Vocational School, founded in 1836, became the Technical High School in 1877 and is, since 1997, a Technical University (TU). The first professorship world-wide for electrical engineering was established in Darmstadt in 1882. Today the TU Darmstadt has around twenty-five thousand students and is the first autonomous, self-governing German university. It belongs to the 100 best universities in the world.