According to the Federal Statistical Office, there were a total of 109 universities and 428 higher education institutions in Germany in 2023/2024. According to the European Commission, there are almost 5,000 higher education institutions within the EU, while global figures vary between 21,000 and 90,000. This is a huge and highly diverse range of institutions, which makes it difficult to compare them. Criteria such as student-teacher ratios, third-party funding, key figures on scientific publications, international orientation, knowledge transfer, sustainability and many more often form the basis for rankings.
All rankings only consider an excerpt of the picture as a whole. The data are drawn from a variety of sources such as publicly accessible data, surveys among various interest groups, publication databases or directly from the universities themselves. “For this reason alone, the results of rankings are frequently not comparable with each other and cannot be regarded as universally valid statements about an institution,” says Sarah Siekermann from the University Development Division, which created the overview website. “Nevertheless, they offer orientation – just like our new website, which is aimed at all HHU members and the interested public.”
In addition to the top positions achieved, an overview of individual results in selected rankings is provided.