University Ranking

Last week already, the annual results of the World University Ranking 2016/2017 were published, and Freiburg's university is among the top one hundred. Before you break into joy, note that last year Freiburg ranked 84 and has lost eleven places since then. Concerning the national ranking, the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität dropped too, i.e., from 7th to 9th place. Times Higher Education assessed 980 universities worldwide regarding teaching, research, citations, technology transfer, and internationalization. The Badische Zeitung criticized that the recent study did not consider Freiburg's new university library yet.

Red Baron studied at the universities of Tübingen, Göttingen, and Munich. Well, Tübingen, 89, now ranks in front of Freiburg, 95. Göttingen, the stronghold of physics in the twenties of the last century, is only in 112th place while Munich's university climbed to rank 30.

When I passed Göttingen train station last weekend on my way to my annual class reunion, I read below the station panel: Stadt, die Wissen schafft (A play on words: Göttingen, not a city of science but a city generating knowledge). Do they really need that advertising, and will the claim help push my former alma mater's ranking next year?

©Wikipedia/Medoim 90

By the way, the University of Wisconsin Madison's ranking in Freiburg's sister city is 45, an excellent position worldwide.

©Times Higher Education

Note that in the ranking from one to ten, all universities are "English-speaking" except for the ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. But remember, languages are never a problem in polyglot Switzerland. The only surprise of this year's ranking is that venerable Oxford reached first place pushing Caltech into second place, while all those famous American heavyweights like Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Princeton are following up, whereas in the usual competition between Oxford and Cambridge (UK) the latter remains in fourth place.

Here on the lighter side, I present graffiti on a wall of Freiburg's university. I know about sexists but are there Sexistinnen, i.e., female sexists? The fact is that at Freiburg's university, the number of female students, 52.6%, has surpassed the number of male students. In addition, female students generally are more diligent and achieve better marks. Does this mean that they now show off to their male colleagues? Was one of the latter frustrated when he demanded that female sexists should go home?

©BZ

*