Bielefeld University

The university is located in the west of Bielefeld next to the Teutoburg Forest. The main building, which houses all the faculties and institutes, as well as the large library, is a functional concrete structure, typical of the 1960s. The main building with 154,000 m2 alone is one of the largest structures in Europe. Intercity trains running between Cologne/Bonn and Berlin stop regularly at Bielefeld, and the university can be accessed via city tram (Line 4) in about 10 minutes from the city center—or in about 15 minutes by car. The nearest airport, Paderborn/Lippstadt, is about 50 kilometres southeast of Bielefeld. Library Bielefeld University Library occupies most of the first floor of the main university building and contains over 2.2 million volumes. It is open every day of the year, from 08:00 until 01:00 Monday to Friday, and from 09:00 to 22:00 during weekends and public holidays. The library's projects include the development of tools to improve access to electronic resources. It works with commercial system suppliers to meet the needs of academic libraries—collaborations that have resulted in developments such as BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine), by which metadata is collected from scientific repository servers and indexed, along with data from selected web sites and data collections, using the Solr framework. ==Academic profile==

Central academic institutes • Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) • Institute for interdisciplinary research on conflict and violence (IKG) • Center for Interamerican Studies (CIAS) • CeBiTec – Center for Biotechnology • CITEC – Cognitive Interaction Technology (Center of Excellence) • Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab) • Interdisciplinary Centre of Women's and Gender Studies • Institute for the Simulation of Complex Systems (ISKOS) • Institute of Mathematical Economics (IMW) • Research Centre for Mathematical Modelling (FSPM) • Teacher Training Centre (ZfL – in German) Oberstufen-Kolleg and Laborschule at the University of Bielefeld Since their founding by Hartmut von Hentig in 1974, the laboratory schools Laborschule and Oberstufen-Kolleg have focused on integrating educational research into everyday teaching: school teachers collaborate with university researchers in research projects. A research institute at the university corresponds to each school ("Research Unit Laborschule" and "Research Unit Oberstufen-Kolleg"). The Oberstufen-Kolleg has received multiple awards, for example the Robert Bosch Foundation's German School Award in 2010 for its innovative integration of migrant students into the school and a United Nations Award for a charitable project in Daular, Ecuador together with the German School of Guayaquil. Rankings In the QS World University Rankings for 2024, the university is placed within the 951–1000 range, ranking as the 45th institution at the national level. and among the top 300 universities by the traditional Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the THE ranking of 2011 Bielefeld is placed among the top 50 universities in engineering and technology. In terms of mathematics, the Academic Ranking of World Universities of 2018 places Bielefeld among the four best universities of Germany and 101–150 best universities in the world. The German Center for Higher Education Development Excellence Ranking, which measures academic performance of European graduate programs in biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics, placed Bielefeld in the excellence group for mathematics. ==Protests against tuition fees==

Bielefeld University was one of the centers of student protests in the fight against the introduction of tuition fees. In the course of the protests, the central hall and the university president's office were occupied by protesting students for over a month. In its session of 12 July 2006, the university senate decided to introduce tuition fees of €500 per semester, beginning in 2007. In August 2006, a universal key for the university went missing during a senate session. After that, multiple cases of arson and defacement of university property were reported. University president Dieter Timmermann was a particular target of these attacks. The cost of the damage, mainly due to the replacement of thousands of locks, was estimated at over a million euros. Tuition fees in North Rhine-Westphalia were abolished again for the winter semester 2011/2012. ==See also==