What was the first university in the world?
Apparently it’s Egypt’s University of Alexandria.
There were no universities until the 5th century?
The university was founded 100 years after the city was burned to the ground?
Oops, read that wrong it was the library that was burned.
Yes, but as long as the stadium survived, they could still field a football team. Which is the important thing for a university…
Speaking of which, how did the U of Alexadria do in the fifth century AP poll?
Mediaevalists will argue the first truly modern unis in the world were at Oxford and Cambridge (both early 12th century); you might enjoy reading David Knowles Evolution of Medieval Thought in which he discusses why the university system is actually an invention of the Middle Ages (as compared to the earlier centres of learning and intellectualism such as Alexandria). Much of it has to do with the degrees and the way the institutions were organised.
Sifting through my texts here, I stand corrected. The first formal uni is the University of Bologna, which was a well known centre for legal studies by the mid 11th century when the university was formally founded. The University of Paris was formed by masters who came to Paris on the strength of the cathedral school at Notre Dame around 1150 (and was formally chartered as a uni by Philip Augustus in 1200).
Oxford by 1167, and Cambridge’s origins go back to the late 12th century, too.
Most universities were founded in places already known for scholarship or an extant (cathedral) school. Sometimes, it was the students who formed a guild and organised all the by-laws, and sometimes it was the masters. More often, it was the students – I can’t remember off the top of my head if it were Bologna or Paris where the students formed guilds setting out the curriculum and making very strict demands on the quality of the teachers and syllabus. (I know there were student guilds in Bologna to protect the students from unscrupulous landlords and shopkeeps.)
A good general overview is also in Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter’s text Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475.
And Oxford and Cambridge do have footy teams (in the new ‘Division Two’) 
Just to clarify for our non-UK readers here–neither Oxford United or Cambridge United, both in “Division Two,”* have any connection at all with the universities. Oxford University and the ‘Tabs have footy teams in the British Universities’ Sport Association leauges.
*Jeez, to think just a handful of years ago that was called “Division Four.” It’s like grade inflation, I tell you.
Thank you – I did honestly mean that as a bit of a giggle, really !
But I can see where people may have been confused; I do apologise.
As a side note, I have to keep up with the tables via the internet part of the year, and was non plussed to see the new classifications (the polite translation of what I really said.)
i think perhaps you’re all obsessing too much about finding old examples of what we currently consider to be a university. If you stick to rigid definitions such as "An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master’s degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor’s degrees. ", then clearly China did not have such a thing 258 AD as posted. If, however, you accept that a university is any “institution organized and incorporated for the purpose of imparting instruction”, then you can find examples a lot earlier than 258 AD. Imparted educationa nd instruction has of course been done since the dawn of time, but specific institutions dedicated to it can surely be seen in, eg, Plato’s Academy.
Dan
Disregarding the fact that this has already been answered, I just have to butt in and add more because it’s so seldom a GQ comes up that calls on my field.
I think you could argue it either way.
Higher education/universities as we think of them do, indeed, have their roots in the medieval European institutions mentioned earlier. The tradition of having education linked to a specific institution, where one could get an official degree through a legally recognized entity–that’s from the 13th century in Europe. However, one historian writes, “In the ancient world and classical world, or in area untouched by the European university tradition, education often developed to such high levels that it would be intellectually dishonest to exclude it from a discussion of higher education.”
The oldest university in the world was the Takshila University in India, established in 700 BC. A more formal and second oldest was the Nalanda University in India, established in 400AD.
Cite here
If anyone really cares, I can probably find the book and put up a proper cite, but I bought/read a book last year about ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq) which documents (via archaeologists finding zillions of clay tablets) schools for the preparation of tutors. An educational institution with the purpose of preparing its students to teach others qualifies as a university, doesn’t it?
I felt motivated yesterday afternoon, and was lucky enough to find the book (I need more bookcases! 
). It’s The Sumerians, by Samuel N. Kramer (1963), University of Chicago Press. Here is what was, for me, the clincher:
While it is true that the large majority of graduates from the Sumerian schools became scribes in the service of the temple and palace and among the rich and powerful of the land, there were some who devoted their lives to teaching and learning. Unlike our modern system, a single school took in children learning to read/write, and graduated professional scribes (adults). IOW, from first grade through baccalaureate studies (at least). The structure of the staff appears to have been such that a graduate might begin his career as a scholar as what we today would call a teaching assistant, and gradually worked his way up the ladder of scholarship.
I think I should, on the evidence provided, have termed all of these individuals “scholars” (as Kramer calls only those who pursue careers as educators) rather than scribes. Among other things, those who finished school and went out to actually be “scribes” performed duties we would describe as surveyor, lawyer, administrator, and more. Linguistics came to be even more important once the Semites conquered the Sumerians, as the scribes had to master written Sumerian, even though the language of the people had become Akkadian. This conquest would seem to have been similar, at least WRT education and culture, to the Roman conquest of Greece. 
Although the Akkadians do not appear to have adopted speaking Sumerian in daily life as the Romans did Greek.
Quotation is from the chapter titled “Education: The Sumerian School”, page 231. I have summarized the rest from subsequent pages.
The earliest records go back to 2500 BCE, but the reported level and variety of knowledge which, IMO, justifies “university” only goes back to 2000 BCE, at most. However, that is clearly rather older than 700 BCE.