List of oldest universities in continuous operation

This is a list of the oldest existing universities in continuous operation in the world.

Inclusion in this list is determined by the date at which the educational institute is generally recognised as having become a university by academic historians, although it may have existed as a different kind of institution before that time. This limits the term "university" to institutions with distinctive structural and legal features that developed in Europe, and which make the university form different from other institutions of higher learning in the pre-modern world, even though these may sometimes now be referred to popularly as universities.

The main list consists of institutions generally recognised by historians as having been universities (Latin: studia generalia prior to 1500, while the second part of the list gives the oldest university derived from the medieval European model in a country, or part of a country where there are multiple university systems identified by independent sources. Institutions must also still be in operation, with institutional continuity retained throughout their history. Some early universities, including the University of Paris, founded around the beginning of the 13th century but abolished by the French Revolution in 1793, are excluded. Some institutions reemerge, but with new foundations, such as the modern University of Paris, which came into existence in 1896 after the Louis Liard law disbanded Napoleon's University of France system.

The word "University" is derived from the Latinuniversitas magistrorum et scholarium, which approximately means "community of teachers and scholars." The University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy, where teaching began around 1088 and which was organised into a university in the late 12th century, is the world's oldest university in continuous operation, and the first university in the sense of a higher-learning and degree-awarding institute. The origin of many medieval universities can be traced back to the Catholiccathedral schools or monastic schools, which appeared as early as the 6th century and were run for hundreds of years prior to their formal establishment as universities in the high medieval period.

Universities and ancient higher-learning institutions founded outside Europe, such as those of ancient Greece, Africa, ancient Persia, ancient Rome, Byzantium, ancient China, ancient India and the Islamic world, are not generally recognised as universities by historians owing to their cultural, historical, structural and legal differences from the medieval European university from which the modern university evolved, thus they are not included in this list. These include the University of al-Qarawiyyin, University of Ez-Zitouna and Al-Azhar University, which were founded as mosques in 859, 698 or 734, and 972 respectively. These developed associated madrasas; the dates when organised teaching began are uncertain, but by 1129 for al-Qarawiyyin in the 13th century for Ez-Zitouna, and Al-Azhar. They became universities in 1963, 1956 and 1961 respectively.