QS Rankings: University of Freiburg under the top ten in Germany

The QS World University Rankings 2024 distinguishes the University of Freiburg as the ninth best university in Germany. The University of Freiburg landed fifth place among the comprehensive universities in the country. In a worldwide comparison, it is ranked 192nd among the best 1,500 universities. The University of Freiburg achieved its highest score in a Germany-wide comparison in the area of sustainability with fourth place. In terms of the proportion of international scientists, it is ranked fifth, and in terms of the supervision ratio and citations per scholar, it is ranked ninth. The QS World University Rankings are published annually by the British company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) in cooperation with the scientific publisher Elsevier. It takes into account more than 5,500 universities worldwide and then evaluates the best 1,500.

Expanded methodology, nine indicators

For the 20th edition of the QS World University Rankings, the methodology for evaluating universities has been further developed to reflect changes in the higher education landscape. Among other things, this involves the growing importance of sustainability, research collaborations and alumni activities after graduation.

The universities are now evaluated accordingly on the basis of nine instead of the previous six differently weighted indicators in the areas of research, teaching and internationality. They include scientific reputation (30 per cent), reputation as an employer (15 per cent), teacher-student ratio (10 per cent), citations per faculty (20 per cent), proportion of international students (5 per cent), proportion of international scholars (5 per cent), international research collaborations (5 per cent), alumni activity after graduation (5 per cent) and sustainability (5 per cent). The publication analyses are based on results from Elsevier's Scopus database. Additional data are provided by the universities.