University in Germany
The University of Cologne () is a university in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1388. It closed in 1798 before being re-established in 1919. It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 44,000 students. The University of Cologne is a member of the German U15 association of major research-intensive universities and was a university of excellence as part of the German Universities Excellence Initiative from 2012 to 2019. It is constantly ranked among top 20 German universities in the world rankings. 
University of Cologne has 4 Clusters of Excellence; CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research, Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets &amp; Public Policy, CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence for Plant Sciences and Cluster of Excellence Matter and Light for Quantum Information (ML4Q). As of 2022, among its notable alumni, faculty and researchers are 4 Nobel Laureates, 11 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, 7 Humboldt Professorship winners, 2 Humboldt Research Awards winners and 1 Rhodes Scholar.
History.
1388–1798.
The university of Cologne was established in 1388 as the fourth university in the Holy Roman Empire, after the Charles University of Prague (1348), the University of Vienna (1365) and the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (1386). The charter was signed by Pope Urban VI. The university began teaching on 6 January 1389, and operated for several hundred years.
In 1798, the university was abolished by the French First Republic, who had invaded Cologne in 1794, because under the new French constitution, many universities were abolished all over France. The last rector Ferdinand Franz Wallraf was able to preserve the university's Great Seal, now once more in use.
1919–today.
In 1919, the Prussian government endorsed a decision by the Cologne City Council to re-establish the university. This was considered to be a replacement for the loss of the University of Strasbourg on the west bank of the Rhine, which contemporaneously reverted to France with the rest of Alsace. On 29 May 1919, the Cologne Mayor Konrad Adenauer signed the charter of the modern university.
At that point, the new university was located in Neustadt-Süd, but relocated to its current campus in Lindenthal on 2 November 1934. The old premises are now being used for the Cologne University of Applied Sciences.
Initially, the university was composed of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences (successor to the Institutes of Commerce and of Communal and Social Administration) and the Faculty of Medicine (successor to the Academy of Medicine). In 1920, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts were added, from which latter the School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences was split off in 1955 to form a separate Faculty. In 1980, the two Cologne departments of the Rhineland School of Education were attached to the university as the Faculties of Education and of Special Education. In 1988, the university became a founding member of the Community of European Management Schools and International Companies (CEMS), today's Global Alliance in Management Education.
The university is a leader in the area of economics and is regularly placed in top positions for law and business, both for national and international rankings.
Organization.
The University of Cologne is a statutory corporation (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts), operated by the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Faculties.
The university is divided into six faculties, which together offer 200 fields of study. The faculties are those of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, Law, Medicine (with the affiliated university clinic), Arts, Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Human Sciences.
Rectors.
On 10 May 2023, Joybrato Mukherjee was elected as Rector of the .
Profile.
The University of Cologne is member of the association German U15 e.V. which is a coalition of fifteen major research-intensive and leading medical universities in Germany with a full disciplinary spectrum.
Especially the faculties of law and economics are renowned and leading in Germany. Leading researchers are affiliated to Cologne: e.g., Angelika Nußberger, Thomas von Danwitz, Claus Kreß, Martin Henssler, Ulrich Preis, Heinz-Peter Mansel.
Apart from these, affiliated persons with the university have won various awards including Max Planck Research Award, Cologne Innovation Prize (City of Cologne), Postbank Finance Award (Deutsche Postbank), Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine (Jung Foundation), SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, Wilhelm Vaillant Prize (Wilhlem Vaillant Foundation), Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize (DFG), Alfried Krupp Prize for the Advancement of Young Professors, Innovation Prize of the State of NRW, Karl Arnold Prize (North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and Arts).
Name
The university did not have a name for a long time, except for the medieval name "universitas studii s[an]c[ta]e civitatis coloniensis" (see university’s seal) or the new name "Cologne University". Both mean that the university was an institution of the "city of Cologne". Josef Kroll, Rector of the university from 1945 to 1949, introduced the official name "University of Cologne". Kroll had already taken the initiative in his first term of office in the early 1930s.
Organization and Faculties
The Rectorate is responsible for the governance and management of the university. It consists of the Rector as Chairperson (Joybrato Mukherjee), six Vice-Rectors and the Chancellor (Karsten Gerlof). The Rectorate is elected by the University Election Assembly, in which the Senate and the University Council exercise equal voting power; the first term of office is at least six years and subsequent terms of office at least four years. The Rector is Chairperson of the Rectorate and the Senate of the University.
The university is divided into the following six faculties:
"WS 2022/23, according to the university publication 'Zahlen Daten Fakten 2022"' "(as of December 2022), main and part-time students, excluding doctoral students, incl. short-term students"
On 20 July 2005, the University Senate approved a concept for the reorganization of the faculties. The concept led to the dissolution of the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Curative Education and the founding of a new ‘sixth’ faculty, the "Faculty of Human Sciences". The representatives of the didactic subjects, who had previously worked mainly at the Faculty of Education, were assigned to the faculties corresponding to their subject as a separate subject group for didactics in the course of the reorganization (for example "Biology and its didactics", "Chemistry and its didactics" as a new didactic subject group at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences), while the new "Faculty of Human Sciences" mainly retained the pedagogical, curative education and psychology subjects or transferred them from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Faculty of Education. The reorganization of the faculties was formally implemented on 1 January 2007 with the establishment of the corresponding committees. In 2010, the Centre for Teacher Education was founded, which was given extensive responsibilities in the organization and coordination of teacher training degree programmes as part of the restructuring of teacher training in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Special funding for research
DFG
EU
Central graduate schools
Cooperation with major research institutions
Some University of Cologne professors are also members of major research institutions:
University prizes for outstanding achievements
Each year, the University of Cologne awards prizes in the categories research, teaching and learning as well as administration.
Schmittmann Wahlen Scholarship
This scholarship is awarded to doctoral candidates. The scholarship is awarded in honour of professor Benedikt Schmittmann (1872–1939), a professor at the University of Cologne.
Gerhard Michel Scholarship
In 2003, a former employee in the International Office, who was responsible for studies abroad, set up a university scholarship fund; thanks to donations from former international scholarship holders and friends of internationalization it is possible to award annual scholarships for study visits to partner universities that offer fee waivers.
Cologne University Foundation
The Cologne University Foundation was established in 2019 to promote early-career researchers, research and academic projects. The foundation manages private donations to the university, which promote the transfer of knowledge to society.
Third-party funding
The volume of third-party funding was 216.8 million euros in 2022, of which 90.6 million euros was allocated to the Faculty of Medicine. The German Research Foundation was by far the largest provider of third-party funding with 84.8 million euros and a share of 39 euros. Other third-party funders in 2022 were the EU (9.6 million euros), the federal government (40.5 million euros), the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (competition procedure totalling 19 million euros), foundations (19.2 million euros), industry (32.3 million euros) and other third-party funders (11.2 million euros).
Endowed professorships
The university has acquired a number of endowed professorships, some of which have been established on a long-term basis or only for a few years and are then funded by the state.
Teaching
The University of Cologne is a research-orientated comprehensive university. With 337 degree components and programmes and 79 doctoral disciplines (in the winter semester 2022/23), the university offers a wide range of study and research opportunities. 157 of these degree programmes are undergraduate programmes (including the state examinations in medicine and dentistry and the first examination in law) and 181 are consecutive programmes. The teaching degree programmes make up a total of around 45%. The largest degree programmes are Law, Human Medicine and Business Administration.
In January 2022, the University of Cologne published its mission statement teaching and learning, which describes the university’s ambitions and serves as a basis for the further development of teaching and learning offers. Based on the mission statement for teaching and learning, the University of Cologne has developed a quality management system that involves and is shaped by all status groups. The University of Cologne is currently seeking system accreditation for its QM system. The Vice-Rectorate for Teaching and Studies is headed by Beatrix Busse.
Student representation
The students of the university are represented by student members in the various university committees, such as the Senate. These members are directly elected in annual elections or appointed by directly elected members from higher-level bodies. Due to the legal requirements of Section 11 subsection 2 of the Higher Education Act NRW, students do not form a majority in most committees and can be outvoted by professorial members and other status groups.
In contrast, the constituted student body is a statutory body under public law of the university and represents student interests. The central bodies are the student parliament with its 51 elected members and the student union (AStA) appointed by it as the executive body. The most important tasks of the student body are to represent the student interests in the university and society, to participate in the political discourse of the university and to promote culture, sport and political education. In order to fulfil these tasks, the student body levies a fee from the students, which is collected together with the fee for the Kölner Studierendenwerk as a course and tuition fee. In the winter semester 2023/24, this amounted to €320.05, of which 31% was allocated to the Studierendenwerk and 63% to the semester ticket; the AStA is responsible for negotiating the price of the semester ticket with the Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe (KVB). The remaining 6% was distributed by the student body to its own projects and salaries as well as to University Sport Cologne. The AStA offers a wide range of services, including counselling and complaints offices, a bicycle repair shop, a tool rental service, the campus garden and countless cultural and informative events such as lectures, museum tours, the long study nights and the ‘festival contre le racisme’.
In addition to the general representation of student interests, the student body also has several autonomous departments such as the autonomous parents’ department or the autonomous internationals' department; these departments represent special status groups within the student body.
At faculty level, the student associations look after the interests of their respective students. Depending on the faculty, there is either joint student association for all students in the faculty or a two-tier system consisting of a departmental and a faculty representation. In addition to providing subject-specific advice and representing students’ interests to lecturers, providing support to first-semester students is one of the main tasks of the student associations.
Internationalization
The International Office is responsible for the university’s international relations (offering support for international students and visiting scholars and scientists, study and research opportunities abroad, university partnerships, international marketing) at university level and the Centres for International Relations at Faculty level (centralized-decentralized organizational concept). 
The university has been operating an office in Beijing since the beginning of 2007 (official inauguration in May 2007). The office is located at the DAAD German Centre and represents the China-NRW University Alliance. The University of Cologne has taken on the task of coordinating academic contacts with China from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The office will make it easier for members of the consortium to expand their work in