Department of Communication Among the World’s Leading Institutes

In a recent and widely noted global university ranking, the Department of Communication (IfK) received outstanding national and international evaluations. The “QS World University Ranking by Subject 2026” places the IfK among the top 100 institutes worldwide. A total of 277 universities were ranked in the field of Communication and Media Studies. Ahead of the 51–100 range, where the IfK is placed, only LMU Munich (rank 24) and Freie Universität Berlin (rank 30) appear nationally. Looking more closely at the individual ranking criteria, the IfK compares very favorably with both leading German institutions: publications from Münster even achieve slightly more citations per publication on average. Within the University of Münster, the department is therefore among the university’s highest-ranked disciplines.

The ranking is based on the weighting of various factors. In addition to the aforementioned citation count for publications, drawn from Elsevier’s Scopus database, these include, for example, the results of surveys among academic peers regarding the academic reputation of institutions.

A strong ranking position is newsworthy because such information often influences students’ decisions when choosing where to study. Nevertheless, rankings of this kind should also be viewed critically. From a global perspective, for example, English-language publications automatically gain greater relevance due to their wider reach than German-language publications. As a result, an international orientation can lead to the neglect of national academic debates. Universities with elite status are also automatically better known than smaller institutions, which can influence reputation surveys. Moreover, rankings introduce a neoliberal logic into the education sector: universities become competitors for students, third-party funding, and prestige. Those who already have a lot are generally given even more through such rankings — for example, reputation and visibility. In academia, this phenomenon is known as the “Matthew effect.”

Contact person public relations:
Dr Stephan Völlmicke
Telefon: +49 251 83-23006
Telefax: +49 251 83-21310 (Geschäftszimmer IfK)