Portal:University/Did you know

Academia is a general term for the whole of higher education and research. The word comes from the Greek referring to the larger body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. In the 17th century, English and French religious scholars popularized the term to describe certain types of institutions of higher learning.
Institutions of higher learning considerably older than the most ancient European universities existed in countries such as China, Egypt and India. Some of them are still in operation today. (Example)

McGhee Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies in Alanya is run by Georgetown University as the only independent study program in Turkey?
The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest in the world.
In the last decades of the 20th century, a number of mega universities have been created, teaching with distance learning techniques.
Colloquially, the term university is used around the world for a phase in one's life: "when I was at university…"; in the United States, college is often used: "when I was in college…".
The Times Higher Education Supplement, a British publication, annually publishes the Times Higher World University Rankings, a list of 200 ranked universities from around the world.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities is compiled by researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and includes major institutes of higher education in all countries of North America, Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America, compared and ranked by multiple numerical criteria, including publications in peer-reviewed journals and Nobel prizes awarded to alumni and staff.