| University of Cologne | |
| Native Name: | Universität zu Köln |
| Latin Name: | Universitas Coloniensis |
| Campus: | Urban |
| Country: | Germany |
| Coordinates: | 50.9281°N 6.9286°W |
| Students: | 50,792 |
| Native Name Lang: | de |
| Academic Staff: | 7,393[1] |
| Budget: | €897.9 million |
| Academic Affiliation: | U15 |
The University of Cologne (German: link=no|Universität zu Köln) is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in the year 1388, the sixth university to be established in Central Europe.[2] It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with more than 50,000 students. The University of Cologne is a member of the German U15 association of major research-intensive universities and was a university of excellence as part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative from 2012 to 2019. It is constantly ranked among top 20 German universities in the world rankings.
University of Cologne has 4 Clusters of Excellence; CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research, Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy, CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence for Plant Sciences and Cluster of Excellence Matter and Light for Quantum Information (ML4Q). As of 2022, among its notable alumni, faculty and researchers are 4 Nobel Laureates, 11 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, 7 Humboldt Professorship winners, 2 Humboldt Research Awards winners and 1 Rhodes Scholar.
The university of Cologne was established in 1388 as the fourth university in the Holy Roman Empire, after the Charles University of Prague (1348), the University of Vienna (1365) and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (1386). The charter was signed by Pope Urban VI. The university began teaching on 6 January 1389, and operated for several hundred years.
In 1798, the university was abolished by the French First Republic, who had invaded Cologne in 1794, because under the new French constitution, many universities were abolished all over France. The last rector Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was able to preserve the university's Great Seal, now once more in use.
In 1919, the Prussian government endorsed a decision by the Cologne City Council to re-establish the university. This was considered to be a replacement for the loss of the University of Strasbourg on the west bank of the Rhine, which contemporaneously reverted to France with the rest of Alsace. On 29 May 1919, the Cologne Mayor Konrad Adenauer signed the charter of the modern university.
At that point, the new university was located in Neustadt-Süd, but relocated to its current campus in Lindenthal on 2 November 1934. The old premises are now being used for the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
Initially, the university was composed of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences (successor to the Institutes of Commerce and of Communal and Social Administration) and the Faculty of Medicine (successor to the Academy of Medicine). In 1920, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts were added, from which latter the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences was split off in 1955 to form a separate Faculty. In 1980, the two Cologne departments of the Rhineland School of Education were attached to the university as the Faculties of Education and of Special Education. In 1988, the university became a founding member of the Community of European Management Schools and International Companies (CEMS), today's Global Alliance in Management Education.
The university is a leader in the area of economics and is regularly placed in top positions for law and business, both for national and international rankings.
The University of Cologne is a statutory corporation (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts), operated by the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The university is divided into six faculties, which together offer 200 fields of study. The faculties are those of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, Law, Medicine (with the affiliated University clinic), Arts, Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Human Sciences.
| Faculty | Students | |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | ||
| Faculty of Law | 5,000 | |
| Faculty of Medicine with University Hospital of Cologne | 3,200 | |
| Faculty of Arts and Humanities | 16,500 | |
| Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences | 7,500 | |
| Faculty of Human Sciences | 2,800 |
On 24 November 2004, the physicist Axel Freimuth was elected as Rector of the University. His (initially four-year) term began on 1 April 2005. He succeeded Tassilo Küpper and was the 49th Rector since 1919. He was previously Dean of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
The University of Cologne is member of the association German U15 e.V. which is a coalition of fifteen major research-intensive and leading medical universities in Germany with a full disciplinary spectrum.
Especially the faculties of law and economics are renowned and leading in Germany. Leading researchers are affiliated to Cologne: e.g., Angelika Nußberger, Thomas von Danwitz, Claus Kreß, Martin Henssler, Ulrich Preis, Heinz-Peter Mansel.
Apart from these, affiliated persons with the university have won various awards including Max Planck Research Award, Cologne Innovation Prize (City of Cologne), Postbank Finance Award (Deutsche Postbank), Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine (Jung Foundation), SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, Wilhelm Vaillant Prize (Wilhlem Vaillant Foundation), Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize (DFG), Alfried Krupp Prize for the Advancement of Young Professors, Innovation Prize of the State of NRW, Karl Arnold Prize (North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and Arts).
| Qs: | 268 |
| Qs N: | 17 |
| Qs Year: | 2024 |
| Qs Ref: | [3] |
| The: | 160 |
| The N: | 15 |
| The Year: | 2024 |
| The Ref: | [4] |
| Arwu: | 151-200 |
| Arwu N: | 6-9 |
| Arwu Year: | 2023 |
| Arwu Ref: | [5] |
According to the QS World University Rankings, the university held the 268th position globally and the 17th position nationally in 2024.[3] The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2023 saw the university at the 160th place globally and 15th place at the national level.[4] In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, more commonly known as the ARWU rankings, for the year 2022, the university was ranked within the 151-200 range globally and between 6th and 9th in the national ranking.[5]
| data-sort-value="156" | 156 | data-sort-value="9–10" | 9–10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Linguistics | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="4–10" | ||
| Archaeology | data-sort-value="51–100" | data-sort-value="6–8" | ||
| Classics and Ancient History | data-sort-value="24" | data-sort-value="5" | ||
| English Language and Literature | data-sort-value="251–300" | data-sort-value="10–12" | ||
| History | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="9–12" | ||
| Modern Languages | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="10–13" | ||
| Philosophy | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="8–12" | ||
| N/A | N/A | |||
| data-sort-value="185" | 185 | data-sort-value="10" | 10 | |
| Biological Sciences | data-sort-value="144" | data-sort-value="11" | ||
| Medicine | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="8–13" | ||
| Psychology | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="8–9" | ||
| N/A | N/A | |||
| Geography | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="8–10" | ||
| data-sort-value="246" | 246 | data-sort-value="9" | 9 | |
| Accounting and Finance | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="6–7" | ||
| Anthropology | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="6–7" | ||
| Business and Management Studies | data-sort-value="251–300" | data-sort-value="9" | ||
| Communication and Media Studies | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="9–10" | ||
| Economics and Econometrics | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="5–8" | ||
| Law and Legal Studies | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="9–12" | ||
| Sociology | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="9–11" | ||
| Arts & humanities | data-sort-value="85" | data-sort-value="7" | ||
| Business & economics | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="10–14" | ||
| Education | data-sort-value="151–175" | data-sort-value="9–10" | ||
| Law | data-sort-value="151–175" | data-sort-value="7–8" | ||
| Social sciences | data-sort-value="176–200" | data-sort-value="9–13" | ||
| Clinical & health | data-sort-value="201–250" | data-sort-value="12–16" | ||
| Life sciences | data-sort-value="101–125" | data-sort-value="11–12" | ||
| Physical sciences | data-sort-value="251–300" | data-sort-value="22–26" | ||
| Psychology | data-sort-value="126–150" | data-sort-value="14–16" | ||
| Natural Sciences | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physics | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="13–23" | ||
| Chemistry | data-sort-value="301–400" | data-sort-value="26–30" | ||
| Earth Sciences | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="5–12" | ||
| Geography | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="8–13" | ||
| Atmospheric Science | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="11–14" | ||
| Engineering | ||||
| Materials Science & Engineering | data-sort-value="401–500" | data-sort-value="22–30" | ||
| Biotechnology | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="14–25" | ||
| Life Sciences | ||||
| Biological Sciences | data-sort-value="76–100" | data-sort-value="6–11" | ||
| Human Biological Sciences | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="13–20" | ||
| Agricultural Sciences | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="9–18" | ||
| Medical Sciences | ||||
| Clinical Medicine | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="14–22" | ||
| Public Health | data-sort-value="301–400" | data-sort-value="12–22" | ||
| Dentistry & Oral Sciences | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="22–28" | ||
| Medical Technology | data-sort-value="51–75" | data-sort-value="9–12" | ||
| Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences | data-sort-value="301–400" | data-sort-value="24–29" | ||
| Social Sciences | ||||
| Economics | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="6–8" | ||
| Law | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="3–7" | ||
| Political Sciences | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="5–7" | ||
| Sociology | data-sort-value="35" | data-sort-value="1" | ||
| Education | data-sort-value="201–300" | data-sort-value="8–15" | ||
| Communication | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="11–14" | ||
| Psychology | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="5–11" | ||
| Business Administration | data-sort-value="101–150" | data-sort-value="1–2" | ||
| Management | data-sort-value="151–200" | data-sort-value="2–3" | ||
In 2022, the university enrolled 48,214 students. 7,010 Students earned their graduate or undergraduate degrees in 2022.
There were 5,265 students with non-german citizenship in the 2022 Summer Semester. The largest contingents of first year students came from Italy (10.3%), Turkey (8.8%), Poland (9,8%), France (6.6%) and Spain (5,5%).
There are 613 professors at the university, 31% of the professors are female. Including the professors the university employs a total of 4,667 research assistants.[9]
The University of Cologne maintains twenty official partnerships[10] with universities from ten countries. Of these, the partnerships with Clermont-Ferrand I and Pennsylvania State are the oldest partnerships. In addition, Cologne has further cooperations[11] with more than 260 other universities.
The University of Cologne was commemorated on the Federal Republic of Germany's postage stamp in 1988, celebrating university's 600 years.[13]