University of France
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The University of France (French: Université de France; originally the Imperial University of France) was a highly centralized educational state organization founded by Napoleon I in 1808 and given authority not only over the individual, previously independent, universities, but also over primary and secondary education. The former individual universities were henceforth to be known as "academies" (e.g. the Académie de Paris), but each still retained a rector and local board of their own.
The University of France was finally disbanded in 1896, when the universities regained a relative independence (but still within a centralized national system with the Ministry of Education as the highest authority).