Introduction: Early Universities

The University of Bologna established around 1088 is recognized as the world's oldest university in continuous operation. This universitas, under Roman law, was a "national" guild / union of masters and scholars, turned into one for legal purposes. It was called a "Studium Generale" by the Pope, open to students from anywhere, having the capacity to issue degrees. Each guild gave some protection against local authorities, and also some leverage dealing with teachers booksellers and landlords. By the early 13th century, these national guilds had coalesced into two corporations, the "universitas" cismontanorum (this side of the mountains) for students from Italy outside of Bologna, and the "universitas" ultramontanorum for students from north of the Alps.

In Paris the Sorbonne opened in 1150, becoming known as the Université de Paris. In England Henry II banned English students from attending this university with Oxford (which had opened earlier) expanding considerably. Cambridge University 100 kms east, formed in 1209 after Oxford townspeople executed students for causing a woman's death.

The University of Naples Federico II (Italian: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) named after its founder, Frederick II in 1224 is said to be the oldest state-funded university in the world.

Click here for other ancient/modern universities and the traditions in Morocco, Greek, Russia, India, China, Arabic and Hebrew.

End Intro.

Main Body: Top Universities Worldwide

Below are www.TopUniversities.com rankings for 2027 plus details of where to go via wiki links

This rankings list, initially merged with Times Higher Education's list 2004 - 2009, ranked universities on "best in their field in research" with endowment grants at far higher levels than we perhaps expect to see here in Australia.

Click here for Times Higher Education's alternate ranking since 2010. It excluded both Hong Kong Universities, Nanyang Singapore, and the University of NSW, replacing them with four additional US universities.

  1. Princeton New Jersey 80 km SW of New York
  1. University of Chicago
  1. Columbia Upper Manhattan New York
  2. UCLA (Los Angeles)

 

Below is the full Top 21 list from www.TopUniversities.com with two universities tied for 20th place.

  1. MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston 350 km NE of New York
  2. Imperial College London

and Stanford at PaloAlto, 44 km SE of San Francisco. It is 20 km NW of San Jose with Mountain View, Google's location, mid-way between them

  1. Oxford 90 km NW of London
  2. Harvard Boston 350 km NE of New York
  3. Cambridge 100 km North of London
  4. Caltech California Institute of Technology Los Angeles
  5. ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

and UCL University College London

  1. NUS National University of Singapore
  2. University of Hong Kong
  3. NTU Nanyang Technological University Singapore
  4. Peking University Beijing
  5. Tsinghua (Qinghua) University Beijing
  6. University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia 150 km SW of New York
  7. Cornell Ithaca 350 km NW of New York

and Yale New Haven Connecticut 130 km NE of New York

  1. Chinese University of Hong Kong
  2. University of New South Wales Kensington Sydney
  3. Johns Hopkins University Baltimore 60 km NE of Washington DC

and University of California, Berkeley 20km NE of San Francisco over the bay

 

22. University of Melbourne Parkville Melbourne

28. University of Sydney Camperdown Sydney

29. Australian National University Canberra

31. Monash University Melbourne

40. UQ University of Queensland St Lucia Brisbane

230. GU Griffith University Mt Gravatt Brisbane and Gold Coast

240. QUT Queensland University of Technology Brisbane

** End of Report

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