University rankings have only been common in Germany since 2003. They are carried out by CHE (German Centre of University Development) and the results are published in the newspaper "Die Zeit". Not the universities are ranked, but the individual subject areas are evaluated. Special attention is given to four main categories of teaching and research. Currently these are

• the assessment of the general study situation by the students themselves,
• student support at the beginning of their studies,
• the supervision of the students by the lecturers.

In addition, many other indicators are compared, e.g. duration of study, IT equipment, library, number of doctorates, possibility of studying abroad, course offer and study organization as well as the relevance of research in terms of receiving third-party funding. In the evaluation of the individual categories and indicators, the assignment is divided into three groups: top group, midfield and final group.

The Kaiserslautern mathematics department is very proud that it is the only German mathematics department, which always counted to the top group. In the current ranking, Kaiserslautern achieved again the best rating in all three categories.

Also international rankings see Kaiserslautern in the top group. In the Shanghai Ranking of 2018, Kaiserslautern was listed among the top 150 mathematics departments worldwide.

In the European university ranking "U-multirank" of 2016, which contains a comparison of 295 European mathematics departments, the Department of Mathematics of the TU Kaiserslautern performed excellently. In the categories "Teaching and Learning" and "International Orientation" it is listed with the second best score of all mathematics departments.