Freie Universität Berlin

"In founding DUW, we created the first university for continuing education in Germany, with professional development offerings in a broad range of academic subjects. We are happy that the Klett Group is the partner of Freie Universität Berlin in realizing this forward-looking project, and that Berlin’s mayor and Senator for Education and Science have lent their support to our concept. Berlin’s position as the academic capital of Germany is now sustained by yet another important institution — one that cannot be valued highly enough in view of the enormous demand for continuing education in Germany."

Prof. Dr. Peter-André Alt
President, Freie Universität Berlin

Profile

Excellence in research, an international orientation and wide-ranging cooperative projects with academic organizations and institutions throughout Germany, Europe and the world: all of these uphold the reputation of Freie Universität Berlin as one of the world’s leading academic institutions.

Freie Universität Berlin is one of nine German universities that have been distinguished under the German government’s Initiative for Excellence as “beacons of science.” In comparative surveys, Freie Universität Berlin is consistently ranked among the leading universities in Germany — including comparisons by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Times Higher Education Supplement, and the Centre for Higher Education’s Research Ranking.

Freie Universität Berlin and its excellent research in particular are stimulated by international influences: the university maintains more than 130 partnerships worldwide, and its various faculties and departments have nearly 370 international cooperative projects. The campus in Berlin’s Dahlem district is home to 15 departments, where 34,000 students are enrolled in some 100 courses of study. Over 460 professors from Germany and abroad conduct top-level research and pass on their knowledge to the rising generation.

Freie Universität Berlin is not only a leader with regard to its international integration and its academic standards. The University’s president, Prof. Dieter Lenzen, began the new millennium with a commitment to social responsibility that includes a new definition of the university’s relation to enterprise. Freie Universität Berlin has since been named in an independent study as Germany’s “most enterprising university,” and in 2008 the Financial Times Deutschland called its president the “Higher Education Manager of the Year.” The number of patent applications based on work conducted at Freie Universität Berlin has increased exponentially in the past ten years, and the university has received numerous donations and other funding from the private sector.