Just a couple of days ago, The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2021 were released. Interested to see the how German universities perform this year?
About the Times University Ranking
The Rankings 2021 are the largest and most diverse university rankings to date. They include more than 1,500 universities across 93 countries/regions. The Times university ranking is quite authoritative. When I was still a Uni student, I once helped Times to carry out student interviews to gather data from students. The interview questions in my opinion are quite comprehensive and well designed. The Rankings include 13 performance indicators across four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
German universities overall dropped slightly in the Times University Rankings 2021
This year the overall result for German universities dropped slightly in comparison to last year. 8 universities in Germany made it into top 100 and 23 into top 200 last time. This time it was 7 and 21 respectively. RWTH Aachen University dropped out from top 100 and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and University of Duisburg-Essen dropped out from top 200. LMU Munich kept its no.1 seat among all German universities.
| Rank | Name | Teaching | Research | Citation | Industry Income | International Outlook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32(-) | LMU Munich | 68.7 | 78.7 | 87.9 | 100 | 68.1 |
| 41(▲2) | TU Munich | 63.8 | 73.6 | 85.0 | 100 | 74.4 |
| 42(▲2) | Heidelberg University | 67.5 | 61.7 | 96.6 | 56.9 | 68.4 |
| 75(▲5) | Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin | 48.3 | 48 | 97.4 | 92.1 | 66.6 |
| 78(▲13) | University of Tübingen | 53.3 | 59.7 | 81.9 | 77.1 | 64.3 |
| 80(▼6) | Humboldt University of Berlin | 60.6 | 67.8 | 68.3 | 37.6 | 68.3 |
| 83(▲3) | University of Freiburg | 48.4 | 52.2 | 87.3 | 100 | 77.8 |
However, there is good news for anyone interested in Goethe University Frankfurt- this year the ranking went up from 301-350 to 251-300. It is the only University in Frankfurt in the overall ranking list.
German universities are not necessarily worse than the others
Overall the performances of German universities in the Times University Rankings 2021 still fall behind that of UK and US universities. This does not necessarily mean that German universities are any worse though. As you may all know, the vast majority of German universities are public funded and most of them do not require tuition fees. Without abundant funding to invest in infrastructure etc., it is harder to keep up in the Rankings. German universities, in comparison to e.g. US universities, have more focus on teaching than research. However, the Rankings put higher weight on research results.
Additionally there is no huge gap between German universities. They are only better or worse than the others in different areas. There is no such “elite system” like in France or Ivy Leagues like in the US. This also results in employers in Germany not caring too much about from which universities the applicants graduated. For more on this, check out my article on searching finance jobs in Frankfurt.
In the end, each university ranking has different criteria that are taken into account. The ranking itself should not be the sole reason for choosing a university but serve more as a reference. To me, what I look for in the rankings is usually the industry income or career prospect scores.
For the entire ranking list, click here to access the link.
Which university is your pick? What are the important criteria for you to pick the universities to go to?
