The Excellence Ranking of the CHE at ZEIT ONLINE. In a letter to the CHE, EU Education Commissioner Ján Figel supports the efforts of the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE) to develop a European ranking of excellent universities. For all the diversity, there is a lack of orientation opportunities for students and young researchers in the field of European higher education providing them with useful, transparent and comparable information to help them in their selection of a place of study.

In the CHE Excellence Ranking first published in late 2007 as part of a pilot project, the CHE identified those universities across Europe offering outstanding research achievements in the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics. Information on their respective offers for Masters and PhD students were gathered as part of the “CHE ExcellenceRanking.”

In 2009 and 2010 respectively, the ExcellenceRanking was republished with updated data and was extended to other subject areas. Thus by late 2010, an atlas of outstanding European research opportunities was available for students in the subjects of Biology, Chemistry, Economics, Mathematics, Physics, Political Science, and Psychology.