[1] It is internationally-oriented and delivers a variety of English- and German-language study programmes across four faculties: Technology and Bionics, Life Sciences, Society and Economics, and Communication and Environment.

The applicants were Kleve and the "We-4"-cities (Kamp-Lintfort, Moers, Neukirchen and Rheinberg), but the concept of separate universities was discarded.

Instead, the two competing candidates Kleve and Kamp-Lintfort were assigned joint responsibility to establish a two-campus university in November 2008.

[3] Due to its status as a public university in the state of NRW, no tuition fees are charged.

[6] The two campuses are located on the outskirts of Germany's most populous metropolitan region, the Rhine-Ruhr, which can be reached by the Cologne–Nijmegen railway.