Into the New Semester With Momentum

Exactly 25,894 students are currently (as of 10 October 2024) enrolled at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU). In comparison: Last year, there were 26,136 shortly before the start of lectures.

So far,3,238 first-year students have enrolled for the winter semester; a slight increase on the previous year, when this figure was 3,192 at a comparable time. As in previous years, this number will continue to grow until the official deadline for determining first-year student numbers on 1 December, meaning that around 4,000 first-year students are expected for the 2024/25 academic year together with the 655 new students from the 2024 summer semester.

As things stand, 15,847 female students and 10,014 male students attend lectures and seminars. 33 students did not specify their gender. The proportion of women is therefore 61.2 per cent and has remained unchanged compared to the previous year.

So far, 2,503 foreign students have enrolled. This corresponds to 10 per cent of the total number of students - a slight upward trend.

Women in professorships: 25 new professorships were filled between 1 January 2024 and 1 October 2024, and JMU has succeeded in further increasing the proportion of women. It currently stands at 29.6 per cent; at the end of 2020, it was 23 per cent. University President Paul Pauli is pleased with this positive trend, but emphasises that the university is continuing to work on increasing the proportion of female professors. As at 1 October 2024, a total of 486 female and male professors were working at JMU and the University Hospital.

Popular subjects: Law, economics, medicine and teacher training programmes are traditionally in high demand. There are currently 6,089 students enrolled on teacher training programmes at JMU - slightly fewer than a year ago.

New Degree Programmes at the Start

Four new Bachelor's and three new Master's degree programmes have started at the university this winter semester.

The Bachelor's degree programme Diversity, Ethics and Religions - offered by the Junior Professorship of Islamic Studies/Arabic Studies - provides an interdisciplinary approach to various religious intellectual traditions and their dynamic exchange processes.

The Bachelor's degree programme in Digital Business & Data Science at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics is also interdisciplinary. The managers of tomorrow are trained here with content from business administration and computer science.

The Bachelor Classics programme is dedicated to looking to the past . It combines the disciplines of Classical Archaeology, Ancient History, Greek and Latin Studies and opens up a broad understanding of the archaeology, literature and philology of Greek and Roman culture.

The Bachelor of Art Education can be combined with many other subjects. Based at the Institute of Education, the programme focuses on teaching art and aesthetic practice.

Artificial Intelligence, Near Eastern Archaeology and Management International are also new Master's degree programmes.

A Year Characterised by the Excellence Strategy

In February 2024, the University of Würzburg was successful with an outline in the highly competitive competition for a new Cluster of Excellence . The Nucleate research project, a joint application with the two Munich universities TUM and LMU, is concerned with groundbreaking basic research into nucleic acids in order to develop new biotechnological and medical applications. The next step followed in August with the submission of the full proposal. A continuation application was also submitted for the existing Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat - together with TU Dresden. If both applications are successful, this will qualify JMU for an application to become a University of Excellence, which is already being worked on. Alongside the Munich universities - which already have this coveted status - the University of Würzburg is the only Bavarian university that can still hope to achieve this distinction. The decision on the cluster applications is expected on 22 May 2025.

Strong in Rankings, Successful With ERC Grants

University President Pauli was delighted with JMU's good performance in various research rankings in 2024, with the internationally renowned Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, Shanghai Ranking) placing the University of Würzburg among the 300 best universities in the world. In Germany, it ranks 12th.

And in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking 2025, JMU moved up twelve places internationally to 163rd place. Nationally, we were able to climb one place to 16th place.

In Bavaria, both rankings only list the two Munich Universities of Excellence higher.

JMU had a particularly successful twelve months with the ERC grants, the coveted funding programmes of the European Research Council, with seven scientists from Würzburg being successful. Their work is being funded with sums of between 1.6 and 2.5 million euros.