Where was the world's first university established?

There is some controversy regarding which is the world's oldest university. If we consider a university as a corporation of students, then Plato's Academy is the first historically documented university. The original Latin word "universitas", first used at the time of renewed interest in Classical Greek and Roman tradition, tried to reflect this feature of Academy. If we consider university simply as a higher education institution, then it could be Shangyang, which was founded before the 21st c. BC in China

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master, and doctorate) in a variety of subjects. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of masters and scholars". Because of the above definition, there is some controversy regarding which is the world's oldest university. If we consider a university as a corporation of students, then Plato's Academy is the first historically documented university. The original Latin word "universitas", first used at the time of renewed interest in Classical Greek and Roman tradition, tried to reflect this feature of Academy. If we consider university simply as a higher education institution, then it could be Shangyang, which was founded before the 21st c. BC in China, if it is not a just myth. In the western world, the choice is between Takshashila, Nalanda, Ratnagiri University and Al-Azhar University. The University of Constantinople (Byzantine Empire), re-founded in 849 AD by the regent Bardas of emperor Michail III, is generally considered to be the first institution of higher learning with the characteristics we associate with University today (research and teaching, self-administration, academic independence, etc. Nalanda University, founded in Bihar (India) from around the 5th century BC, also gave academic titles to its graduates, while also offering post-graduate courses. A third university whose ruins were only recently excavated was Ratnagiri University in Orissa. Al-Azhar University, founded in Cairo (Egypt) in the 10th century, offered a variety of post-graduate degrees, and is usually regarded as the first full-fledged university. The ancient cities of Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramasila, and Kanchipura in ancient India were greatly reputed centres of learning in the east, with students from all over Asia. In particular, Nalanda was a famous center of Buddhist scholarship, and as such it attracted thousands of Buddhist scholars from China, East Asia, Central Asia and South-East Asia, while also attracting many students from Persia and the Middle East. The awarding of academic titles was not a custom of other educational institutions at the time but ancient institutions of higher learning also existed in China (Academies (Shuyuan)), Greece (the Academy), and Persia (Academy of Gundishapur) The Academy, founded in 387 BC by the Greek philosopher Plato in the grove of Academos near Athens, taught its students philosophy, mathematics, and gymnastics, and is sometimes considered to resemble a university. Other Greek cities with notable educational institutions include Kos (the home of Hippocrates), which had a medical school, and Rhodes, which had philosophical schools. Another famous classical institution was the Museum and Library of Alexandria. Institutions bearing a resemblance to the modern university also existed in Persia and the Islamic world prior to Al-Azhar University, most notably the Academy of Gundishapur. In ancient China, there were a number of institutions of higher learning that vaguely resembled universities in the Western sense of the word. It's reputed that an education system had been established before 21st century BC in China and a higher learning institution named Shangyang (Shang means high and Yang means school) had been established by Shun(2257 BC–2208 BC) during the Youyu period. The higher learning institution may have influenced the central imperial school, which was called Piyong in Zhou Dynasty (1046–249 BC), Taixue in Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), and Guozijian in Sui dynasty. Nanjing University traces its history back to the imperial central school at Nanjing founded in 258 and the Imperial Nanjing University became the first comprehensive institution as a combination of education and research consisted of five faculties in 470. In a single dynasty there was only one imperial central school which was always located in the capital city and was the highest institution of learning of the nation. There were also another kind of institutions of learning called Shuyuan since 8th century in Tang Dynasty. They were generally privately owned, and some were partly aided by governments. There were thousands of Shuyuan in China, and the degree of them varied from one to another. The advanced Shuyuan such as Yuelu Shuyuan and Bailudong Shuyuan can be taken as higher institutions of learning. The early Chinese state depended upon literate, educated officials for operation of the empire, and an imperial examination was established in the Sui Dynasty (581–618) for evaluating and selecting officials from the general populace. In the Carolingian period, Charlemagne created a type of academy, called the palace school or scola palatina, in Aachen, a city in present-day Germany. Another school, nowadays embodied by the Brexgata University Academy, was founded in the year 798 by Carolingian leaders. It was situated near Noyon, a city in present-day France. From a broader perspective it were the scholars, the aristocrats, the clergymen, and Charlemagne himself, who shared a vision of educating the population in general, and of training the children of aristocrats in how to manage their lands and protect their states against invasion or squandering. These initiatives were a foreshadowing of the rise, from the 11th century onward, of universities in Western Europe. The first European medieval university was the University of Magnaura in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), founded in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, followed by the University of Salerno (9th century), University of Bologna (1088) in Bologna, Italy, and the University of Paris (c. 1100) in Paris, France, later associated with the Sorbonne. Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali. In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools were deemed to have become primarily sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries. In Europe, young men proceeded to university when they had completed their study of the trivium–the preparatory arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic–and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. (See degrees of Oxford University for the history of how the trivium and quadrivium developed in relation to degrees, especially in anglophone universities). A professor giving a lecture at the Helsinki University of TechnologyUniversities are generally established by statute or charter. In the United Kingdom, for instance, a university is instituted by Act of Parliament or Royal Charter; in either case generally with the approval of Privy Council, and only such recognized bodies can award degrees of any kind. In Mali, West Africa, the celebrated Islamic University of Sankore (established 989 C.E.) had no central administration; rather, it was composed of several entirely independent schools or colleges, each run by a single master (scholar or professor). The courses took place in the open courtyards of mosque complexes or private residences. The primary subjects were the Qur’an, Islamic studies, law and literature. Other subjects included medicine and surgery, astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, philosophy, language and linguistics, geography, history and art. The students also spent time in learning a trade and business code and ethics. The university trade shops offered classes in business, carpentry, farming, fishing, construction, shoe making, tailoring and navigation. It was claimed that the intellectual freedom enjoyed in Western Universities was inspired from universities like Sankore and Qurtuba (Muslim Spain) universities. Memorizing the Qur’an and mastering Arabic language were compulsory to students. Arabic was a lingua franca of the university as well as the language of trade and commerce in Timbuktu. Except from a few manuscripts, which are in Songhay and other a’jami language, all the remaining 70,000 manuscripts are in Arabic. (Al-Furqan Heritage Foundation-London publishes a list of the manuscripts just in Ahmed Baba library in 5 volumes.) Like all other Islamic universities, its students came from all over the world. Around the 12th century, it had an attendance of 25,000 students, in a city of 100,000 people. The university was known for its high standards and admission requirements There is a growing movement, dubbed the University of the Third Age, "the U3A", which consists of small, independent and autonomous groups of retired scholars and others engaged in study for its own sake, of charitable status and without the award of any form of degree or qualification: a university in the ancient sense of a corporation of scholars. The scope of the U3A studies extends far beyond the walls of academe and embraces most of the physical as well as the mental disciplines appropriate to those in the "third age" of life.

Plato's Academy is the first historically documented university

I think it was in Padua in Italy

I agree with Heathen....it must have been in the days of the Ancient Greeks and the great thinkers.

Lyceum

Difficult question. The first public learning institutions were scribal schools in mesopotamia, which date from the 3rd Millenium BC. However, these could hardly be called universities since they only taught people up to the age of about 16 or 17 and taught fairly basic skills such as litteracy and basic numeracy. University level education was provided in royal courts, merchants' offices and temples, and people learnt on the job, as it were, as aprentices. The first institute of higher learning in recorded history was Plato's accedemy in athens (the Accademia) which taught philosophy, maths, politics and eventually such subjects as natural history and theology to people who had allready received a basic education there or elsewhere. However, the Acceademia and the institutions that mimicked it were not universities in the modern sense. The oldest accademic institution that still exist is the university of Perugia in Italy, founded in about 1200, and this was also the first university in anything like the modern sense. It taught such subjects as maths, philosophy, theology, law, medicine and astromomy to its students, and was essentially run by the church. Other universities all over Europe date from a similar time. The modern, state funded, secular university orrigianated in the Ukraine, where the University of Kiev was run along these lines untill the Russian conquest, at which point the professors and many of the students were transferred to Moscow. Other contenders for the titel of the world's oldest university include the beauraucratic schools of madarin China, established in the fifth century AD, the religious and philisophical schools of ancient India, first attested in the sixth century AD and the muslim universities established in such cities as Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus in the 9th and 10th centuries AD.

In ancient times India had very good educational system in mathematics and astrology. scholars from Greece and Rome attended it.

A university is unearthed in Tenochtitlan the great aztec city. it will be some time before that news comes out