Dear Readers,

At the end of the 25th anniversary celebrations in the summer semester, the University of Oldenburg received a birthday present that was as important as it was surprising: its good performance in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) ranking published by START and STERN for the subjects of Computing Science, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Economics. This study is not one of many that have been entertaining a wide audience for ten years and only rarely provide information about the quality of universities. Rather, the CHE's detailed catalogue of questions, which was developed by the German Rectors' Conference (HRK) in the mid-1990s, provides a very differentiated view of the performance of individual subjects. It is not surprising that the USA is once again the role model. There, performance in the rankings has already become an existential issue for universities. Poor grades mean significantly less money and far fewer students.

The results for Oldenburg in the CHE ranking are impressive. Not only is the university rated well by the students (two places in the top group, three in the middle group), but it also performs well in the area of research, and even very well in comparison with the rest of Lower Saxony.

However, it is an exaggeration to talk about the "perfect world in Lower Saxony" in a STERN portrait of the University of Oldenburg. The university does not shine everywhere - for example, it would be good if study times were shorter and contact between teachers and students improved in one subject or another.

In fact, there is enough to do in the increasingly fierce competition, in which many a president in the large state of Lower Saxony has already given up his noble restraint. In Oldenburg, other approaches are being taken to improve the university's performance. In the summer semester, the University Senate made a ground-breaking decision that in future will make the allocation of material resources to the departments dependent on their performance. If there are many graduates and doctoral candidates in a department and if a particularly large amount of third-party funding is acquired and publications are produced there, the share of the university budget will also increase.

This was a big step in Lower Saxony. More will follow.

Yours

Gerhard Harms