Times Higher Education
The Times Higher Education World University Ranking is an annual international university ranking. The ranking takes into account indicators relating to teaching, research and the internationality of universities
In the Times Higher Education World University Ranking 2026, the University of Cologne is ranked 164th overall (out of 2,191), placing it in the top 7,5 per cent of all listed institutions worldwide. Within Germany, the University is ranked 14th place out of 55.
THE Ranking by Subject
In addition, 11 subject rankings are published annually. The WiSo Faculty was able to contribute to two top 10 rankings within Germany in the current 2026 subject ranking.
- Subject area "Business and Economics", ranked 5th place nationally (with University Hamburg und Technical University Hamburg).
- Subject area "Social science", ranked 10th place nationally (with University Bonn, University Jena and University Göttingen).
Indicators and weighting
17 indicators from the areas of teaching, research environment, research quality, internationality and industry are used to calculate the rankings.
Teaching
Teaching = teaching reputation, supervision ratio, doctorate rate, doctorates per academic, income per academic
Research environment
Research environment = research reputation, third-party funding income per academic staff member, publications per academic in leading international journals
Research quality
Research quality = citation rate over five years (citations per publication with subject-related weighting), research strength (field-weighted citation impact (FWCI)), research excellence (number of top 10% papers according to FWCI), research influence (number and importance of papers citing own university research)
International outlook
International outlook = proportion of international staff, proportion of international students, proportion of international co-publications
Industry
Industry = third-party funding from industry per researcher, patents (number of citations of own university research in patents)
Weighting
While the Business & Economics category reflects the Economics and Business Administration departments from the WiSo Faculty, the Social Sciences category also includes individual subjects from other faculties, such as Geography (Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences), Media Studies (Faculty of Arts) and Education (Faculty of Human Sciences).
The weighting of the indicators is adjusted depending on the subject:
| Subject | Teaching | Research environment | Research quality | International outlook | Industry |
| Business & Economics | 30,4% | 31,6% | 25,0% | 9,0% | 4,0% |
| Social Sciences | 31,9% | 31,6% | 25,0% | 7,5% | 4,0% |
More information on the Website of the: THE (Times Higher Education) World University Rankings