Editing University of Cologne (section)

===Student representation===
The students of the university are represented by student members in the various university committees, such as the Senate. These members are directly elected in annual elections or appointed by directly elected members from higher-level bodies. Due to the legal requirements of Section 11 subsection 2 of the Higher Education Act NRW,<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 May 2025 |title=Zusammensetzung der Gremien |url=https://recht.nrw.de/lmi/owa/br_bes_detail?sg=0&menu=0&bes_id=28364&anw_nr=2&aufgehoben=N&det_id=685530 |access-date=12 May 2025 |language=de}}</ref> students do not form a majority in most committees and can be outvoted by professorial members and other status groups.

In contrast, the constituted student body is a statutory body under public law of the university and represents student interests. The central bodies are the student parliament with its 51 elected members and the [[AStA|student union (AStA)]] appointed by it as the executive body. The most important tasks of the student body are to represent the student interests in the university and society, to participate in the political discourse of the university and to promote culture, sport and political education. In order to fulfil these tasks, the student body levies a fee from the students, which is collected together with the fee for the Kölner Studierendenwerk as a course and tuition fee. In the winter semester 2024/25, this amounted to €304.25, of which about 36% was allocated to the Studierendenwerk and 58% to the semester ticket; the AStA is responsible for negotiating the price of the semester ticket with the Kölner Verkehrs-Betriebe (KVB). The remaining 6% was distributed by the student body to its own projects and salaries as well as to University Sport Cologne. The [[AStA]] offers a wide range of services, including counselling and complaints offices, a bicycle repair shop, a tool rental service, the campus garden and countless cultural and informative events such as lectures, museum tours, the long study nights and the ‘festival contre le racisme’.

In addition to the general representation of student interests, the student body also has several autonomous departments such as the autonomous parents’ department or the autonomous internationals' department; these departments represent special status groups within the student body.

At Faculty level, the student associations look after the interests of their respective students. Depending on the Faculty, there is either joint student association for all students in the Faculty or a two-tier system consisting of a departmental and a Faculty representation. In addition to providing subject-specific advice and representing students’ interests to lecturers, providing support to first-semester students is one of the main tasks of the student associations.