Talk:University of Cologne

Largest or not?

The section "The University Today" contradicts the data in the summary.

By the numbers in the summary -- and by public statements -- Cologne is still the largest university. According to that section, however, it is not even the second largest. -- Ashmodai 08:14, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

So dull!

This article is so dull and doesnt say anything about

• student life
• choice of professors
• infrastucture provided
• reputation of departments like economics (5 wise men) etc.

26 February 2006

Hm. If anybody has inside knowledge of that, would be nice to know. As for student life, there's really not much to say about that. The "Fachschaften" (student unions of the departments) seem to do a lot, but I haven't really payed them much attention as of yet.

Heck, we don't even have a web hosting service for students and the virtual private network requires either direct dial-in or some weird software by Cisco Systems.

Every department has its own library in addition to the university's library (which is publically accessible) and nobody likes the management, economics and justice departments' students, but that's really just the normal hate you have elsewhere too.

What else can I say? It's a horrible place to study applied computer sciences (Angewandte Informatik) because they only provide one subject for that unless you intend to study Medieninformatik (basically computer sciences for TV and film), but you didn't hear that from me.

The campus is rather nice, but unlike what seems to be the norm in the USA for example, the student apartments are all over the city rather than just in one or two big districts.

Lastly, the technology tends to be horribly outdated for the (second) largest university of Germany -- but at least most computers in the computing center have Linux installed in addition to Windows XP (some have Win NT 4 instead, tho).

The main purpose of the computer rooms seems to be to house the computer related courses anyway, so apparently they don't care much about other uses of them, except for a few of the computer pools, which tend to have even more outdated machines (in one of the philosophy department's pools the computers take at least a few minutes to boot to the desktop), though.

Anyway. Nice place to study nevertheless. So far I didn't have any bad encounters with the docents nor students. -- Ashmodai 04:14, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Notable Alumni

I am sorry, but are those two obscure characters (Grunebaum and Teismann)all this community can come up with? I'll try to add some more prominent alumnis. Dpilat 09:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

External links modified

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Academic profile doesn't exist?

So what's up with the empty "academic profile" section? Why was that deleted? Is someone writing a replacement? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spatio temporal (talk • contribs) 14:34, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

Comparison of German and English entries

Dear Community,

My name is Jan Voelkel and I work in the Press and Public Relations Department at the University of Cologne. I have noticed that the German Wiki entry on the University of Cologne is much more extensive than the English one. I therefore wanted to find out whether it is possible for me to align the two entries and change the English entry accordingly.

I would like to emphasize that I am not trying to change the content for PR purposes. I am aware that Wikipedia is not a platform for PR or the self-promotion of the university. I would just like to transfer the information that is already published in the German version of the article to the English entry.

Is this okay?

With best regards

Jan Voelkel JanVoelkelKoeln (talk) 13:11, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

No. As an employee of the university you should not be editing the article. Cabayi (talk) 10:45, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

@JVoeKoeln: Cabayi (talk) 10:47, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

History

Hello Wikipedia,

The first sentence under the "History" section states that the University of Cologne was the fourth university of the Holy Roman Empire. However, according to Wikipedia's list of medieval universities, the University of Cologne would not be the fourth. The University of Bologna, University of Vicenza, University of Padua (the Padua article also states that it is the second-oldest university in Italy in the introduction paragraph, which seems to be incorrect), University of Naples Frederico III, University of Siena, etc. were all founded prior to 1388. If the source is referring only to non-Italian universities, then it would be the fifth: Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Erfurt (1379) and Heidelberg (1386) were all founded before (in the introduction paragraph to Heidelberg University it states it was the third university founded in the HRE, and that it is the oldest university in Germany, when it means to say it is the oldest continually operational university in Germany). Overall, the timeline seems to be a bit cluttered not only on this article but for multiple university pages.

Am I missing something here? For instance, I am not sure if Vicenza was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the university's founding, although it was being ruled by the Emperor. The labelling as the fourth university is accurate to the source but the source seems to be wrong. I am not sure what to replace the sentence with, since it would either need to be linked to a university date summary like the aforementioned list of medieval universities, or it would need to take the references from there, leading to 4 or 5 in-text citations for a trivial piece of information. I am not sure how to fix this.

Farewell, 108.63.232.161 (talk) 17:38, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

June 2025

Judith Wojda has declared a professional connection to the subject of this article. Edits should be reviewed for NPOV and sources used. They have previously deleted a more citations needed tag, despite the article having a lot of content that is unsourced. Isaidnoway (talk) 23:22, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

@Isaidnoway Thank you for checking thoroughly and ensuring adherence to the principles. As you mentioned, I declared my professional connection to the university to inform other users and comply with Wikipedia's guidelines. As an employee, I am kept informed about current changes and developments, and I thought it would be useful to include this information in the article. That's why I started adding facts to the article – I rarely added much text, and when I did, I copied it from somewhere else so that it wasn't my own wording or opinion. I always provide sources for the information I add, describing the changes in detail so that others can understand them. In my opinion, I adhere to the NPOV principle.

Is there any information in particular that lacks sources? I checked the article and tried to find sources for as much as possible. Of course, most of the content was created by others, so finding the respective sources was sometimes difficult. However, I would be very thankful if you could indicate the specific passages.

Thank you! Judith Wojda (talk) 10:00, 16 June 2025 (UTC)

Edit request

Dear Community! I’m proposing the following changes to the entry for the University of Cologne. Would anyone be so kind as to check the changes and update the entry for me?

Extended content

• What I think should be changed (include citations):

- The number of students needs to be updated: "It is now one of the largest universities in Germany with around 43,594 students.[5]" --> With over 43,000 students in the 2024/25 winter semester, it is one of the largest universities in Germany in terms of student numbers. Source: https://uni-koeln.de/en/university/at-a-glance

- Three more TRRs should be added to the overview under “DFG”: TRR 172: ArctiC Amplification: Climate Relevant Atmospheric and SurfaCe Processes, and Feedback Mechanisms (AC)3, TRR 259: Aortic Disease, TRR 422: PodoSigN – Podocyte Signaling Networks - From Basic Concepts to Disease Understanding

- The amount of third-party funding must be updated: "The volume of third-party funding[5] was 239.2 million euros in 2023, of which 103.9 million euros was allocated to the Faculty of Medicine." --> The volume of third-party funding was 245.1 million euros in 2024, of which 107.0 million euros was allocated to the Faculty of Medicine. Source: https://uni-koeln.de/en/university/at-a-glance

- This paragraph should be deleted, as the source is not available online. Apparently, the one provided is outdated: "The German Research Foundation was by far the largest provider of third-party funding with around 101.5 million euros.[5] Other third-party funders in 2023 were the EU (16.9 million euros), the federal government (42.8 million euros), the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (21.7 million euros), foundations (17.2 million euros), industry (29.9 million euros) and other third-party funders (9.2 million euros).[5]“

- The amount of the UoC’s total budget needs to be updated: "The total budget of the University of Cologne (including the Faculty of Medicine) amounted to 920 million euros in 2023 (of which 263.7 million euros is allocated to the Faculty of Medicine).[5]" --> The total budget of the University of Cologne (including the Faculty of Medicine) amounted to 932.2 million euros in 2024 (of which 281.6 million euros is allocated to the Faculty of Medicine).[5]

- If the information on the total budget changes, this paragraph should be deleted, as no information can be found online: "The budget was made up of 426.8 million euros in state funds, 239.2 million euros in third-party funding, 120.5 million euros in special funds such as QVM or HSP and 53.5 million euros in other income.[5]"

- This ranking needs to be changed: "The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2023 saw the university at the 160th place globally and 15th place at the national level.[26]" --> The Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2026 saw the university at the 164th place globally. Source: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/university-cologne

• Why it should be changed:

Some of the old figures were out of date. As new figures are now available online, it would be better to use those instead. To ensure that the content is up to date and accurate, the three TRRs and the two MPIs also need to be included. The two deletions are necessary because the relevant information has been updated.

JU50993 (talk) 12:02, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

• No WP:PAID disclosure? Last chance.
• Wikipedia prefers reliable, verifiable, independent sources. The university's own website is not independent. Cabayi (talk) 12:19, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Hello @Cabayi! Thank you for your response. I did not intentionally withhold this information from the community; rather, I am not sufficiently familiar with the policy. In the meantime, I have done some reading on the subject and hope I have taken everything into account – if not, please let me know what I can improve. I have updated the disclosure in my profile accordingly and would also like to mark the edit request as such retrospectively. Is it possible to add the “Template:Connected contributor (paid)” here?

  If not, I would like to inform the community that I am employed by the University of Cologne and that these edits form part of my official duties:

• JU50993 (talk) 15:16, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Reply 11-JUN-2026

  Unable to review  

• Your edit request could not be reviewed because the provided references are not formatted correctly. The citation style predominantly used by the University of Cologne article is Citation Style 1 (CS1). The citation style used in the edit request consists of bare URL's. Any requested edit of yours which may be implemented will need to resemble the current style already in use in the article – in this case, CS1. (See WP:CITEVAR.) In the extended section below titled Citation style, I have illustrated two examples: one showing how the edit request was submitted, and another showing how requests should be submitted in the future:

Citation style

Bare URL reference formatting:

The Sun's diameter is 864,337 miles, while the Moon's diameter is 2,159 miles. The Sun's temperature is 5,778 Kelvin.

References

---

1. https://www.booksource.com
2. http://www.journalsource.com
3. http://www.websource.com

In the example above there are three URL's provided with the claim statements, but these URL's have not been placed using Citation Style 1, which is the style predominantly used by the University of Cologne article. Using that style, the WikiFormatted text should resemble the following:

Citation Style 1 formatting:

The Sun's diameter is 864,337 miles,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sjöblad|first1=Tristan|title=The Sun|url=http://www.booksource.com|publisher=Academic Press|date=2020|page=1}}</ref> while the Moon's diameter is 2,159 miles.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Harinath|first1=Prisha|title=Size of the Moon|journal=Science|issue=78|volume=51|url=http://www.journalsource.com|date=2020|page=46}}</ref> The Sun's temperature is 5,778 Kelvin.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Uemura|first1=Shu|title=The Sun's Heat|url=http://www.websource.com|publisher=Academic Press|date=2020|page=2}}</ref>

Which displays as:

The Sun's diameter is 864,337 miles, while the Moon's diameter is 2,159 miles. The Sun's temperature is 5,778 Kelvin.

References

---

In the example above the references have been formatted according to Citation Style 1, which shows the author, the source's name, date, etc., all information which is lost when only the links are provided. As Wikipedia is a volunteer project, edit requests such as yours are generally expected to have this formatting done before the request is submitted for review.

• Kindly resubmit the edit request below at your earliest convenience, taking care to ensure that it makes use of CS1. If you have any questions about this formatting please don't hesitate to ask myself or another editor. Regards,  Spintendo  14:53, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

References