German Universities of Excellence Well Represented in the World’s Top-500 Universities

An assessment carried out by AllAboutUni.com reveals that 8 of Germany's 9 universities of Excellence are included in the World’s Top-500 universities. AllAboutUni.com is an independent, global and inter-active website where visitors can obtain information about universities (global rankings, student reviews, university news and campus pictures). It publishes regular reports on universities around the world.

The analysis is based on a ranking of the World’s Top-500 Universities produced by the Institute of Higher Education at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University (click here). Several indicators of academic or research performance are used to establish the ranking, these include staff winning Nobel Prizes, highly cited researchers and articles indexed in major citation indices. The rankings have been published since 2003, with the 2008 ranking published on 15 August 2008.

The German Federal Ministry of Education and the German Research Foundation launched an Excellence Initiative to promote research in Germany and to enhance the international visibility of German universities (click here). As part of this initiative, nine universities of Excellence were selected: the Free University of Berlin, the Ludgwig Maximilian University of Munich, the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, the Technical University of Munich, the University of Constance, the Unviersity of Freiburg, the University of Göttingen, the University of Heidelberg and the Unversity of Karlsruhe. German universities (a total of 40 universities) are well represented in the World’s Top-500 universities compared to most other European countries (click here). However, compared to the US (159 universities) and the United Kingdom (42 universities) it performs poorly, especially in the World’s Top-25 universities (click here). Of the nine universities of Excellence, five are in the World's Top-100 universities (Munich (55), Technical University of Munich (57), Heidelberg (67), Göttingen (90) and Freiburg (96)), two are in the World's Top-201-302 universities (Aachen and Karlsruhe) and one is in the World's Top-303-401 universities (Constance).

It is interesting to note that 6 of the 9 universities of Excellence are based in the southern States (Länder) of Baden-Württemberg (4) and Bavaria (2) (click here). It is surprising to note that the University of Bonn – a university ranked 99th in the World’s Top-500 universities – is not included in the nine universities of Excellence. Finally, the Free University of Berlin – which is a university of Excellence – is not included the World’s Top-500 Universities.