The Academic Ranking of World Universities ("Shanghai Ranking") is a global university ranking published since 2003 and conducted by the Center for World-Class Universities (CWCU) of Shanghai Jiaotong University. More than 1200 universities are actually selected by ARWU annually and the best 500 universities are published.

In 2021 the University of Cologne was once again able to achieve top rankings in the fields of Sociology, Economics, Management and Business Administration. As in the previous year, the university was ranked first for "Sociology" in the national evaluation and achieved internationally 40th place (2020: 43rd place). This is an excellent result, thanks in no small part to the excellent work of the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology (ISS) of the WiSo Faculty.

In the current Academic Ranking of World Universities 2021 for the subject area "Economics", the University of Cologne, like the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen, is ranked 4th nationally and 101-150 internationally.

In the subject ranking "Management", the UzK occupies 1st place with the Technical University of Munich and can thus increase its ranking by one place compared to the previous year (101-150th place in the international ranking).

In the area of "Business Administration", the UzK is in 1st place nationally together with the University of Mannheim and the University of Münster and is ranked 101-150 internationally.

For Professor Ulrich Thonemann, the results show that the faculty has already succeeded in filling the shared vision with life, which is crystallised in the still new faculty motto "Today's Ideas. Tomorrow's Impact." "In recent years we have focused our research on topics that are really important and have a big impact - and now we can reap the rewards," says the WiSo dean almost succinctly.

• Link to the ARWU Ranking 2021
• Results in table overview on our website