The University of Heidelberg has improved its position among the world's top universities. The new ranking by the Times Higher Education Supplement rates Heidelberg as Germany's best university. On this assessment it is in fact the only Germany university among the world's top 50. Compared with last year, Heidelberg has improved its showing, moving up two places from No. 47 to No. 45. The University of Heidelberg sees this success as an incentive to further improve its standing in the future.

Only one other German university, Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University, figures among the world's top 100 (in 55th place). Three others among the top 100 last year have been relegated to lower positions.

The world's No. 1 is still Harvard, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA). This year the University of Heidelberg has outstripped a number of strong international competitors, including Australia's Queensland University, the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, the Indian Institutes of Technology, Delft, Boston U, New York U, Helsinki, Tsing Hua, Vienna, Copenhagen, King's College London, the University of Zurich and many others.

The Times indicates that the ranking is based on questionnaires sent to 2,375 scholars and scientists all over the world. Their responses were combined with factors like citation frequency (the number of times publications are quoted by scholars or scientists working in the same field), student-teacher ratios and the number of international academics working at the respective university. This year, the Times analysis has also included for the first time views expressed by international personnel managers about the universities they would prefer to recruit new employees from.

The University of Heidelberg does not intend to rest on its laurels. In last year's Strategy Plan it indicated how it intends to further enhance its position among the leading universities in the world. It has also committed itself to the aim of living up to its claims as an elite university by figuring among the very best universities in the world in the course of the next three years.

For more information go to http://www.thes.co.uk/worldrankings

Please address any inquiries to
Dr. Michael Schwarz
Press Officer of the University of Heidelberg
phone: 06221/542310, fax: 54317
michael.schwarz@rektorat.uni-heidelberg.de
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/index.html