Times Higher Education has just released its highly-anticipated World University Ranking for 2022. Germany has improved on last year’s performance to place 22 higher education institutions inside the top 200. The federal republic is once again the third-best-represented country on the list. 

THE World University Rankings 2022

Published every year in September as the summer holidays come to an end and students head into the new academic year, British magazine THE’s list is a ranking of the best universities in the world. This year’s iteration saw more than 16.000 institutions across 99 countries pitted against each other, with scores assessing their performance in five key areas of academic excellence, including teaching, research, and outlook. 

As usual, the 2022 ranking’s top 10 spots are filled exclusively by institutions from the United States and United Kingdom. For the sixth year in a row, the University of Oxford has claimed the crown as the best university in the world. While its fellow Brit, the University of Cambridge, takes joint fifth place, the other eight top spots in the ranking are all filled by American universities, including the California Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford University. 

The top-ranked university outside of these two countries is ETH Zurich in Switzerland, which takes the 15th position. China also performed well in this year’s ranking, propelling two institutions into the top 20. 

The best universities in Germany in 2022

Germany, meanwhile, put in another solid performance, with all seven of its top 100 universities maintaining or improving their ranking positions from last year. Once again, two universities in Munich - which earlier this month was rated one of the best student cities in the world - are crowned the best universities in Germany: LMU Munich and Technical University of Munich. 

However, it is Germany’s capital city of Berlin which is home to this year’s rising star, with Free University of Berlin rising 35 places from last year to rank 83rd in the world. Humboldt University and Technical University of Berlin both also managed to improve their standings. 

Elsewhere, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and University of Hohenheim rose into the top 200 in the 2022 ranking, while University of Munster lost a few points and slipped outside of the top tiers. 

These 22 German universities all made it into the top 200 in the world in 2022: 

• 32. LMU Munich
• 38. Technical University of Munich
• =42. Heidelberg University
• 73. Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
• 74. Humboldt University of Berlin
• 78. University of Tübingen
• 83. Free University of Berlin 
• =108. University of Freiburg
• =108. RWTH Aachen University
• 112. University of Bonn
• =119. University of Göttingen
• =132. University of Hamburg
• 139. Technical University of Berlin
• =146. University of Mannheim
• =146. Ulm University 
• 165. University of Würzburg
• 166. Bielefeld University
• =172. University of Cologne
• =172. TU Dresden
• 180. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• =197. University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• =197. University of Hohenheim

For more information on the ranking, visit the Times Higher Education website.