185 Fun Facts About College & University

Which university, teaching since around 1088, is regarded as the oldest in continuous operation?

Bologna's university, teaching since about 1088, grew out of guilds of students who hired and paid their own professors, so at first it was the students who ran the place.

In which city is al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and cited by UNESCO as the world's oldest higher-learning institution?

Fez, Morocco, is home to al-Qarawiyyin; by tradition Fatima al-Fihri, a rich merchant's daughter, spent her inheritance founding it as a mosque in 859, and it grew into a famed centre of learning.

The word 'university' comes from the Latin universitas, meaning what?

A whole or community is the core sense of universitas, which in medieval Latin could mean any guild or corporation; guilds of masters and students took the name, and it stuck to their schools.

A medieval legend, long believed, credited which Anglo-Saxon king with founding Oxford University?

Alfred the Great was said to have started Oxford by the chronicler Ranulf Higden in the 1300s, a tale believed into the 18th century; teaching there is in fact documented only from 1096.

Which Oxford college did Cardinal Wolsey found in 1525 as Cardinal College?

Christ Church began as Wolsey's Cardinal College in 1525; after his fall Henry VIII refounded it in 1546 as Christ Church, whose chapel doubles as Oxford's cathedral.

Cambridge students celebrate the end of exams in 'May Week', which is actually held in which month?

June is when May Week now falls: its balls and boat races once came in May, before exams, but they moved to after them in 1882 and nobody changed the name.

Tour guides call Harvard's John Harvard statue the 'Statue of Three Lies' partly because its inscription gives him which title?

Founder is carved on the plinth beside the date 1638, yet the colony's legislature created the college in 1636 and John Harvard was its first big benefactor; even the face is a student model's.

Harvard's Widener Library honours an alumnus who died in the sinking of which ship?

Harry Elkins Widener, Harvard class of 1907, died on the Titanic in 1912; his mother Eleanor funded Widener Library in his memory, and it opened in 1915.

America's second-oldest college, chartered in 1693 and named for William III and Mary II, is in which state?

Virginia is home to William & Mary, in Williamsburg; a college for the colony was planned as early as 1618, but an attack on the settlers in 1622 ended that scheme, and Harvard opened first.

Yale, founded in 1701, took its name in 1718 from Elihu Yale, who was asked for money to do what?

Construct a new building was the plea Cotton Mather put to Elihu Yale; the East India Company merchant sent books, a portrait of George I and bales of goods for the college to sell.

Which Yale secret society meets in a windowless Egypto-Doric 'tomb' built in 1856?

Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 by Yale students William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft, whose son William Howard Taft later joined it on his way to the White House.

Princeton was founded in 1746 under what name?

The College of New Jersey was Princeton's name from its 1746 charter until 1896, when it became a university and marked its 150th anniversary by taking the name of its home town.

How many universities make up the Ivy League?

Eight universities, all in the north-eastern United States, make up the league; 'Ivy' was sports-page shorthand from the 1930s, and the league itself only took shape in 1954 as an athletic conference.

Which is the only Ivy League school not founded during the colonial period?

Cornell was founded in 1865, after the Civil War, by a telegraph millionaire who wanted a place where 'any person can find instruction in any study'; the other seven Ivies all began as colonial colleges.

Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of whom?

Leland Stanford Jr, their only child, died of typhoid in 1884 aged 15; the university opened on the family's Palo Alto farm in 1891.

Which electronics firm did two of Frederick Terman's Stanford students start in a Palo Alto garage in 1939?

Hewlett-Packard began when Terman, the professor later credited with seeding Silicon Valley, urged Bill Hewlett and David Packard into business; an early order came from Walt Disney, for sound gear used on Fantasia.

Which Latin motto did MIT adopt, reflecting William Barton Rogers's belief in learning by doing?

Mens et Manus, 'mind and hand', sums up Rogers's plan to teach science through practical work; Veritas belongs to Harvard and Lux et Veritas to Yale.

Cecil Rhodes, whose will funded the Rhodes Scholarship, made his fortune in which industry?

Diamond mining made Cecil Rhodes rich: he bought up rival claims at Kimberley until his De Beers company dominated the world market, and his will turned that fortune into the Oxford scholarships.

The 1862 Morrill Act created which kind of American college?

The Morrill Act gave each state federal land to endow land-grant colleges teaching agriculture, engineering and military tactics alongside classical studies.

Which Indian city's university was founded in 1857, the same year as Bombay and Madras?

Calcutta's university dates from January 1857; modelled on the University of London, it at first taught no one itself and only examined the students of its affiliated colleges.

What does the Latin phrase 'alma mater' literally mean?

Nourishing mother is the literal Latin; Romans gave the title alma mater to goddesses such as Ceres and Cybele, and only many centuries later did universities borrow it for themselves.

Which honour society, the oldest in the United States, did five William & Mary students found in 1776?

Phi Beta Kappa first met on December 5, 1776, as a secret society with a Greek motto; chapters at Yale and Harvard followed within five years, setting the pattern for Greek-letter societies on American campuses.

Union College, birthplace of Kappa Alpha in 1825, is nicknamed the 'Mother of' what?

Fraternities as Americans know them began at Union College in Schenectady, New York: Sigma Phi and Delta Phi followed Kappa Alpha there in 1827, and the trio became the model for social fraternities across North America.

The word 'campus', first used academically at Princeton in 1774, is Latin for what?

Field is what the Latin campus means; Princeton students used it for the open ground around their college, and by 1900 the word had spread to college grounds across America.

Which is Germany's oldest university, founded in 1386?

Heidelberg became a university town in 1386, when Elector Ruprecht I won the pope's permission to found one in his capital; it is still formally named for him, as the Ruperto Carola.

The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, first held in 1829, is rowed on which river?

The Boat Race is rowed on the Thames in London over the 4.2-mile course from Putney to Mortlake; the first race, in 1829, was held at Henley.

Which disputed result did the 1877 Boat Race produce?

A dead heat was the verdict, the only one in the race's history: with no finishing posts to sight along, judge 'Honest John' Phelps could not split the crews, though Oxford were sure they had won.

For much of its history, what did the letters SAT stand for?

Scholastic Aptitude Test was the name from the first sitting in 1926; in the 1990s it became the Scholastic Assessment Test, and the College Board then ruled that the letters no longer stand for anything.

The first SAT was adapted from which US service's intelligence tests?

Army recruits sat the Alpha exam during the First World War; psychologist Carl Brigham, who had helped give those tests, reshaped them into the SAT for the College Board.

Which acronym, coined in 2008, names free online university courses open to unlimited numbers of students?

MOOC, short for massive open online course, was coined by Dave Cormier in 2008 for a Canadian university course that let anyone on the internet join in free alongside its paying students.

Which physicist held Isaac Newton's old Cambridge chair, the Lucasian professorship of mathematics, from 1979 to 2009?

Stephen Hawking held the Lucasian chair for thirty years; Newton got it in 1669, aged 26, when his teacher Isaac Barrow stepped down in his favour.

Which future US president went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1968?

Bill Clinton studied politics at University College, Oxford, but left without a degree to take up a place at Yale Law School.

Which academic word comes from the Latin for 'to hold'?

Tenure, a professor's permanent post, comes from the Latin tenere; after Jane Stanford forced economist Edward Ross out in 1900, the scandal helped spur American professors to organise and press for it.

The mortarboard cap worn at graduation takes its name from a tool used in which trade?

Bricklaying gave the cap its name: the flat square top looks like the board, also called a hawk, on which a mason holds wet mortar ready for the trowel.

Rutgers, the New Jersey colonial college chartered in 1766, was originally called what?

Rutgers was chartered in 1766 as Queen's College, named for Charlotte, George III's queen; it was renamed in 1825 for benefactor Henry Rutgers.

What is MIT's online course programme, which began teaching in 2012, called?

MITx was announced in December 2011 and began teaching the following spring; within months MIT and Harvard had built on it to launch edX as a joint platform.

Which Oxford library is entitled to a free copy of every book published in the UK?

The Bodleian has received new British books since 1610, when Thomas Bodley struck a deal with London's Stationers' Company; today it is one of six legal deposit libraries for the UK and Ireland.

Which building, finished in 1720, is Harvard's oldest still standing?

Massachusetts Hall, completed in 1720, is Harvard's oldest surviving building; it quartered Continental soldiers during the 1775 siege of Boston.

Archbishop Laud, Oxford's chancellor, won a 1636 royal charter securing the university's right to do what?

Print books of 'all manner' was the right Laud's Great Charter secured, the footing on which Oxford University Press grew; Parliament had the archbishop executed nine years later.

Stanford has no official mascot, but its marching band sends which costumed figure to big games?

A tree, in a costume each wearer designs, stands for El Palo Alto, the tall tree on the university seal; Griffins, Robber Barons and Spikes were all floated as team names but never stuck.

Rutgers and Princeton met in 1869 in what is regarded as the first college game of which sport?

Football's first college game went to Rutgers, 6-4 at home in New Brunswick, though the game looked far more like soccer: the rules of the day banned carrying or throwing the ball.

Which shade of red is official at Harvard and gives its student newspaper its name?

Crimson names both Harvard's official shade and its student daily, founded in 1873; a young FDR ran the paper as its president in 1903, three decades before he ran the country.

Yale was established in 1701 under what original name?

The Collegiate School was chartered by Connecticut's legislature in 1701 to fit young men for 'Publick employment both in Church and Civil State'; it took Elihu Yale's name in 1718, after his gift.

A PhD, whether earned in chemistry or in history, is formally a doctorate in which discipline?

Philosophy here keeps its old Greek sense, love of wisdom, which once took in every branch of learning; Yale awarded America's first PhDs in 1861.

Which songwriter wrote the Yale fight song 'Bulldog' as an undergraduate?

Cole Porter wrote 'Bulldog' as a Yale student, inspired by Handsome Dan, the live bulldog mascot; it was one of some 300 songs he turned out there, and Yale still plays it.

Which future US president led Princeton University from 1902 to 1910?

Woodrow Wilson made Princeton students meet in small groups under tutors called preceptors, then left the campus for the governor's mansion and, in 1913, the White House.

Under what name was Columbia University founded in 1754?

King's College was chartered by George II in 1754 and first met in Trinity Church's schoolhouse; shut by the Revolution from 1776, it reopened in 1784 under the patriotic name Columbia.

Which famous journalism and arts award does Columbia University administer each year?

The Pulitzer Prize was set up by publisher Joseph Pulitzer's will and first awarded in 1917; Columbia had resisted his 1892 offer to fund a journalism school before a new president accepted it.

Which revolutionary left his studies at Columbia's colonial forerunner in 1776 to captain an artillery company?

Alexander Hamilton was drilling with a student militia by 1775 and led a New York artillery company the next year; in 1787 he and fellow alumnus John Jay helped steer the college's rebirth under a private board.

Which statesman founded the University of Pennsylvania and served as its first president?

Benjamin Franklin set out the plan in a 1749 pamphlet and became first president of the trustees; he wanted a school that trained leaders for commerce and public service as well as scholarship.

Which Ivy adopted an 'Open Curriculum' with no general education requirements in 1969?

Brown adopted the Open Curriculum in 1969 after the student-led Magaziner-Maxwell report; students design their own programme with no distribution requirements.

Dartmouth was founded in 1769 to train what group as Christian missionaries?

Eleazar Wheelock founded Dartmouth in 1769 under a charter to educate Native Americans; Mohegan preacher Samson Occom raised much of the money in Britain.

Which Dartmouth alumnus argued the college's charter case before the Supreme Court in 1818?

Daniel Webster, class of 1801, argued Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1818; his closing plea for 'a small college', one that 'there are those who love', passed into Dartmouth lore.

Which Dartmouth student group started the Winter Carnival tradition in 1911?

The Outing Club, proposed in 1909 by student Fred Harris to get his classmates outdoors in winter, held a ski meet in 1910 and turned it into the first Winter Carnival a year later.

Cornell University was built on Ezra Cornell's own farm in which city in upstate New York?

Ithaca had been Ezra Cornell's chosen home since he first saw it as a young man in 1828; he gave his own farm there as the campus, along with half a million dollars of his fortune.

Who co-founded Cornell University with Ezra Cornell?

Andrew Dickson White met Ezra Cornell when both sat in New York's state senate: the scholar supplied the plan, the telegraph magnate the money, and White became the first president.

MIT left Boston's Back Bay in 1916 by moving across which river?

The Charles separates Boston from Cambridge, where MIT's new campus rose with money from a mystery donor, 'Mr. Smith', who turned out to be George Eastman of Kodak.

Which MIT hallway, 251 metres long, runs from Lobby 7 through the main campus buildings?

The Infinite Corridor runs 251 metres east-west through Bosworth's original buildings from Lobby 7; twice a year the setting sun aligns with it, an event nicknamed MIThenge.

At MIT, an elaborate student prank, like the police car left atop the Great Dome in 1994, is called a what?

Hack is MIT's word for a clever prank; the 1994 car was a painted shell assembled on the dome overnight, with flashing lights, a dummy officer inside and a box of doughnuts.

MIT's Radiation Laboratory made it the top non-industrial R&D contractor during which war?

World War II gave the lab its mission: it was set up in 1940 after a British delegation shared its secret cavity magnetron, the device that made compact microwave radar possible.

Stanford's sports teams are called the Cardinal, a name that refers to what?

A colour, not a bird: after dropping the name Indians in 1972 Stanford's teams were the Cardinals, until its president ruled in 1981 that they would be the shade of red itself, in the singular.

Which development, opened on campus land in 1951, was the world's first university research park?

Stanford Research Park began as Stanford Industrial Park: the university was rich in land but short of money after the war, so engineering dean Frederick Terman proposed leasing sites to research firms.

Which natural disaster damaged much of Stanford's campus in 1906?

The April 1906 San Francisco earthquake wrecked Stanford's Memorial Church, library and gymnasium; the university had already struggled financially after Leland Stanford's death in 1893.

Caltech began in 1891 as Throop University, named for the businessman who started it, in which California city?

Pasadena businessman Amos Throop opened his school in a rented building downtown; it later drew scientists such as George Ellery Hale and Robert Millikan and took the name Caltech in 1920.

Which NASA facility, founded by Caltech researchers, has Caltech managed for the agency since 1958?

Jet Propulsion Laboratory grew from 1936 rocket tests by Caltech students nicknamed the 'Suicide Squad', who took their motors off campus to a dry canyon, the Arroyo Seco, where JPL still stands.

Caltech and MIT, rival engineering schools, both chose which animal as their mascot?

The beaver became MIT's mascot in 1914 as 'nature's engineer', after alumni had weighed the kangaroo and the elephant and ruled them out as not American; Caltech's teams are the Beavers too.

The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction happened under which Chicago stadium's stands?

Stagg Field's west stands hid a disused rackets court where Chicago Pile-1 went critical in December 1942; the stadium was free because the university had dropped football three years earlier.

The University of Chicago is located in which community area of the city?

Hyde Park, on the South Side, became the university's home in 1890: a department-store magnate donated the land and John D. Rockefeller's money paid for the founding.

Johns Hopkins built the fortune behind his $7 million university bequest largely by investing in which railroad?

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad shares made Johns Hopkins rich, and he twice bailed the line out of debt; his $7 million bequest of 1873 founded both a university and a hospital.

Who was Johns Hopkins University's first president?

Daniel Coit Gilman toured German universities before opening Johns Hopkins, then built it to merge teaching with research; he led it from 1875 to 1901 after three years heading the University of California.

The university renamed for the Duke family in 1924 honours which relative of James B. Duke?

His father, Washington Duke, is the honouree: his gifts had helped bring the college to Durham in 1892, and when James B. Duke's endowment arrived in 1924 the trustees renamed it as a memorial to him.

Julian Abele, a Black architect long overlooked, designed Duke's West Campus and its chapel in which style?

Gothic stone buildings were Julian Abele's design for Duke, drawn as chief designer at Horace Trumbauer's Philadelphia firm; his role was largely overlooked in his lifetime, and the main quad took his name only in 2016.

Duke's Cameron Crazies famously 'tent' for home basketball games against which rival?

North Carolina is the game worth weeks in a tent: Duke issues no student tickets and fills the seats from the line, so students camp outside the arena in a village called Krzyzewskiville.

Furpaw, Northwestern's live mascot for one losing season in 1923, was which animal's cub?

A bear cub named Furpaw was driven to the field before each game in 1923, then blamed for the losing season and dropped; a Chicago Tribune writer gave the team its Wildcats name a year later.

Northwestern University, founded in 1851, is located in which Illinois city?

Northwestern's main campus is in Evanston, on the lakeshore north of Chicago; the town was named for university founder John Evans.

Which Catholic religious order founded the University of Notre Dame in 1842?

The Congregation of Holy Cross sent Father Edward Sorin from France; in 1842 the bishop of Vincennes gave him the Indiana land on condition that he build a college within two years.

Notre Dame's Word of Life mural on the Hesburgh Library is nicknamed what by students?

The Word of Life mural (1964) is nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because Christ's raised arms mirror a referee's touchdown signal and it is visible from Notre Dame Stadium.

John Carroll founded America's oldest Catholic university in 1789 in what is now part of which city?

Washington came later: Georgetown was still a Maryland river town when John Carroll, a former Jesuit whose order the pope had suppressed, founded his college there in 1789.

Georgetown's 'Hoyas' nickname comes from a student chant meaning roughly what?

What rocks is the usual reading of the cheer 'Hoya Saxa', Greek hoia joined to Latin saxa; its origin is unknown, though one theory ties it to a Georgetown baseball team called the Stonewalls.

In 1929 UCLA moved from Vermont Avenue to which Los Angeles neighbourhood?

Westwood got UCLA's new campus in 1929, with four buildings including Royce Hall; the cramped Vermont Avenue site it left reopened that September as the junior college now called Los Angeles City College.

UCLA's teams became the Bruins because Montana had already claimed which nickname they were using?

Grizzlies was UCLA's name when it joined the Pacific Coast Conference, which already had Montana's Grizzlies; its student council took 'Bruins' instead, a name offered by its counterpart at the university's northern campus.

The University of California's founding campus is named after which Anglo-Irish philosopher?

George Berkeley got the honour in 1866, when trustee Frederick Billings, watching ships sail out through the Golden Gate, recalled his line 'Westward the course of empire takes its way'; the university moved there in 1873.

Which former Treasury Secretary led the founding of New York University in 1831?

Albert Gallatin, the longest-serving Treasury Secretary, led the New Yorkers who wanted a non-denominational university to serve the city's rising merchant class; it was chartered in 1831.

NYU's Bobcat mascot originated from the name of what?

A library computer catalog named it: 'BobCat' was the character that guided users through the Bobst Library's new computerized catalog in 1984, soon after a short-lived mascot, a student dressed as a violet.

Carnegie Mellon's costumed mascot is a dog of which breed?

Carnegie Mellon's mascot Scotty is a Scottish Terrier, a nod to Andrew Carnegie's Scottish roots, echoed by The Tartan newspaper and the Thistle yearbook.

In 1966 Vanderbilt became the only private university in which athletic conference?

Vanderbilt became the SEC's only private member when Tulane left in 1966; Cornelius Vanderbilt's $1 million gift of 1873 was meant to help heal Civil War divisions.

Rice University in Houston was established after its namesake William Marsh Rice was what?

William Marsh Rice was murdered in 1900, chloroformed by his valet in a plot with lawyer Albert Patrick to forge his will; his estate funded Rice Institute, opened in 1912.

Ohio State's costumed mascot, Brutus Buckeye, takes the form of what?

A nut: the buckeye is the nut-like seed of Ohio's state tree. Students planning a mascot in 1965 first considered a live buck deer, then built a papier-mâché buckeye for a classmate to wear.

Which university is home to McDonald Observatory and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library?

UT Austin got McDonald Observatory from a banker's 1926 bequest that his relatives fought in court, and the University of Chicago ran it under contract until the 1960s; the LBJ Library opened on campus in 1971.

Which university beat Cumberland 222-0 in 1916, the most lopsided score in college football history?

Georgia Tech's coach John Heisman, whose baseball team had lost 22-0 to Cumberland earlier that year, held the school to its football contract and ran up the score; Cumberland never made a first down.

Which US president founded the University of Virginia in 1819?

Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village is a UNESCO World Heritage Site; he counted founding the university among the three achievements on his gravestone.

Which building stands at the head of the Lawn as the centrepiece of the University of Virginia's original plan?

The Rotunda, modelled on Rome's Pantheon, put a library where other colleges of the day put a church; fire gutted it in 1895, and its wooden dome was rebuilt in fireproof tile.

The University of Wisconsin's flagship campus lines the shore of Lake Mendota in which city?

Madison got the campus because Wisconsin's constitution called for a state university 'at or near the seat of state government'; its scientists have studied Lake Mendota for over a century.

Reverse transcriptase, Howard Temin's University of Wisconsin discovery, is the target of the first drug against which virus?

HIV copies itself with reverse transcriptase, which Howard Temin found in 1970, so AZT, approved in 1987 as the first treatment, works by blocking the enzyme; Temin shared the 1975 Nobel Prize.

Howard University's namesake, a Civil War general, was also commissioner of which agency?

The Freedmen's Bureau was General Oliver Otis Howard's charge from 1865, set up to help freed slaves after the war; he helped found the university in 1867, and it took his name while he still ran the bureau.

Which future Supreme Court justice graduated first in his class from Howard University's law school in 1933?

Thurgood Marshall went to Howard because Maryland's own law school was closed to Black students; two years after graduating he sued that school on behalf of Donald Murray and won his admission.

Which Purdue alumnus commanded Apollo 17 in December 1972 and was the last Apollo astronaut to walk on the Moon?

Eugene Cernan, Purdue class of 1956, called it 'man's last step from the surface' as he followed Harrison Schmitt up the ladder; Purdue also educated Neil Armstrong, who took the first.

Purdue set up the first university department in the United States devoted to which subject, in 1962?

Computer science became its own department at Purdue in October 1962, split from mathematics; the campus was already a pioneer in flight, and its research foundation paid for Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra.

Which university's stadium is the largest in the United States and the Western Hemisphere?

Michigan's 'Big House' in Ann Arbor holds 107,601; to save money in 1927 it was built smaller than coach Fielding Yost wanted, but with footings already in place for the expansion he expected.

Which Scottish university was founded in 1413 by a papal bull from Antipope Benedict XIII?

St Andrews grew from masters driven out of Paris by the papal schism and out of Oxford and Cambridge by war with England; they began teaching in 1410, and Benedict XIII's bulls followed in 1413.

Which Scottish king's royal charter authorised the University of Edinburgh's founding in 1582?

James VI's charter of 1582 let Edinburgh's town council open its own 'Tounis College', something new in Scotland, where the three older universities had all been founded by papal bull.

Trinity College Dublin's library has housed which illuminated Gospel manuscript since 1661?

The Book of Kells left its abbey town in 1654, when Cromwell's cavalry was quartered in the church and the governor sent it to Dublin for safekeeping; Bishop Henry Jones gave it to the college in 1661.

Which monarch founded Trinity College Dublin by royal charter in 1592?

Elizabeth I granted the charter in 1592 after Dublin's corporation gave Archbishop Adam Loftus the lands of All Hallows, a priory her father had dissolved, as the site for a college.

The London School of Economics was founded in 1895 by members of which group?

Fabian Society members Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Graham Wallas and George Bernard Shaw founded LSE in 1895, using a bequest left to the Fabians by Henry Hutchinson.

Which economist, author of The Road to Serfdom, taught at LSE from 1931 to 1950?

Friedrich Hayek came to LSE in 1931 at Lionel Robbins's invitation and stayed until 1950; a Reader's Digest abridgement of The Road to Serfdom in April 1945 carried his argument to millions of readers.

Founded in 1826, which London institution was the first in England to admit university students regardless of religion?

UCL opened in 1826 as 'London University', a company funded by £100 shares, to give England a secular alternative to the Anglican universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Which royal envisioned South Kensington as a cultural district, seeding Imperial College?

Prince Albert had the Great Exhibition's profits spent on land in South Kensington for museums and colleges, a quarter soon nicknamed 'Albertopolis'; Imperial was formed there in 1907.

Which Holy Roman Emperor inspired the founding of the university in Prague in 1347-48?

Charles IV asked his friend Pope Clement VI for the founding bull of 1347, then granted the Prague university its privileges in 1348, modelling it on Paris; it bears his name today.

Rudolph IV, who founded the University of Vienna in 1365, was a duke of which ruling dynasty?

Habsburg duke Rudolph IV wanted to match the university his father-in-law, the emperor, had already founded in Prague; Vienna's is still called the Alma Mater Rudolphina after him.

Which Polish king founded Kraków's university in 1364, before the Jagiellonian dynasty began?

Casimir III the Great founded it, but it lapsed after his death; Władysław Jagiełło revived it in 1400, partly with money from the jewels Queen Jadwiga left in her will, and his dynasty gave it its name.

Portugal's oldest university, chartered by King Denis in 1290, is in which city?

Founded in Lisbon under King Denis in 1290, the university moved between Lisbon and Coimbra before settling permanently in Coimbra in 1537; it became a UNESCO site in 2013.

Which prince founded Leiden, the oldest surviving university in the Netherlands, in 1575?

William of Orange founded Leiden in 1575 as a Protestant university, reportedly as a reward for the city's resistance during the Spanish siege of 1574.

Sapienza University of Rome was founded in 1303 by which pope?

Boniface VIII founded Rome's Studium by papal bull in 1303; that September the French king's men seized him at Anagni, and he died a month later.

The Catholic University of Leuven split in 1968 after protests over which issue?

Language split it: Flemish students marching under the slogan 'Leuven Vlaams' wanted the French-speaking half out of Flanders; the crisis toppled Belgium's government, and a new town, Louvain-la-Neuve, was built for the departing half.

Who was the first woman to become a professor at the Sorbonne?

Marie Curie took over Pierre Curie's chair after his death in 1906, becoming the Sorbonne's first female professor; she had come to Paris from Poland in 1891.

Robert de Sorbon founded the Sorbonne in the 1250s as a college for students of which subject?

Theology: Robert de Sorbon, chaplain to Louis IX, set the college up to house about twenty poor students of theology; its name later came to stand for the entire University of Paris.

Which physicist earned a teaching diploma at ETH Zurich, later returned there as a professor and won a Nobel Prize?

Albert Einstein left ETH Zurich with a teaching diploma but could not find a teaching post, so he took a job at the Swiss Patent Office; he came back as a professor in 1912.

Moscow State University is named after which Russian scientist?

Mikhail Lomonosov, a fisherman's son who walked to Moscow at 19 to get an education, founded the university with his patron Ivan Shuvalov in 1755.

Whose 1898 coup ended the Hundred Days' Reform but spared Peking University?

Empress Cixi, the dowager, seized power that September, put the reforming Emperor Guangxu under house arrest and had six reformers executed, yet let his new Imperial University of Peking stand.

Tsinghua University's campus in Beijing sits on the site of what?

Tsinghua occupies former Qing imperial gardens, the Qinghua Yuan, in northwest Beijing; founded in 1911 with Boxer Indemnity funds, its alumni include Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao.

The Akamon, a red gate built for a shogun's daughter's wedding, stands at which university?

Tokyo's university inherited the gate with the old Maeda clan estate at Hongo; the lord built it to welcome his bride, a daughter of the shogun Tokugawa Ienari.

In 1980, the University of Singapore merged with which private institution to form NUS?

Nanyang University, Singapore's only Chinese-medium university, was built on donations from people in all walks of life; after the 1980 merger its Jurong grounds went to the institute that became NTU.

Founded in 1850, which is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania?

Sydney's university, founded three years before Melbourne's, took students on exam results whatever their religion, and in 1881 opened all its undergraduate courses to women on the same terms as men.

Australia's oldest universities are informally grouped under the name of which building material?

Sandstone is the informal label for Australia's six oldest universities, the oldest in each state, after the stone of their early buildings; a newer campus with sandstone cladding does not count.

Which denomination originally controlled the University of Toronto before it went secular in 1850?

The Church of England ran the college under Bishop John Strachan until the province made it secular in 1850; Strachan, enraged, went on to found a private Anglican college of his own.

McGill students founded the first organised club in which sport in 1877?

Ice hockey's first organised club was the McGill University Hockey Club of 1877, formed two years after McGill students played in the first organised indoor game in Montreal; basketball's inventor, James Naismith, studied at McGill too.

The University of Cape Town began in 1829 under what name?

UCT began in 1829 as the South African College, a boys' school and college in Cape Town; it became a full university in 1918, helped by the Wernher and Beit bequests.

Which university's Ciudad Universitaria campus was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007?

UNAM's Ciudad Universitaria has a library wrapped in Juan O'Gorman's stone mosaics; its stadium held the 1968 Olympic opening ceremony ten days after troops fired on protesting students at Tlatelolco.

The University of San Marcos, the oldest continuously operating in the Americas, is in which capital?

Lima's University of San Marcos got its royal charter in May 1551, four months before Mexico's; the Dominican friar Tomás de San Martín pressed for it, and its first classes met in his order's convent.

Moscow State University's main tower, Europe's tallest building until 1990, was one of seven ordered by which Soviet leader?

Joseph Stalin ordered seven matching towers for Moscow after the war; the university's, at 240 metres the tallest of them, was built partly with Gulag labour and opened in 1953.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the world's oldest, was founded around 970 by which caliphate?

The Fatimid caliphate founded Al-Azhar around 970 as a centre of Ismaili Shia teaching; after Saladin overthrew the dynasty in 1171 it turned Sunni, and it grew into the leading school of the Sunni world.

Which Ohio college, founded in 1833, is the oldest coeducational liberal arts college in the US?

Oberlin admitted Black students from 1835 and women from 1837; in 1858 its students and teachers took part in the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of a captured fugitive slave, a case that made national news.

Which of the Seven Sisters colleges became coeducational in 1969?

Vassar admitted men in 1969 after declining a proposed merger with Yale; Radcliffe merged into Harvard in 1999, leaving five of the Seven Sisters as women's colleges.

Cecil Rhodes's will funded scholars from Britain's colonies, the United States and which other country?

Germany was included because Rhodes hoped an understanding between England, Germany and the United States would secure world peace; Parliament cancelled the German places in 1916, and women became eligible only in 1977.

The EU's Erasmus exchange programme honours a scholar known as Erasmus of which city?

Rotterdam gave Erasmus his byname; the scheme borrowed it because he studied and taught at universities across Europe, and the word doubles as an acronym of the programme's full title.

Which Muppet collected an honorary doctorate from New York's Southampton College in 1996?

Kermit the Frog was made a Doctor of Amphibious Letters, a pun on the usual Doctor of Humane Letters, and delivered the commencement address himself.

Which search engine began in 1996 as a Stanford PhD research project nicknamed BackRub?

Google first ran on the university's own website, at google.stanford.edu, and its name is a misspelling of googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Researchers at which university developed Gatorade in 1965 to replace what athletes lose in sweat?

Florida's teams are the Gators, which gave the drink its name; Robert Cade led the group of researchers who mixed the first batches.

Which rock guitarist earned an astrophysics PhD from Imperial College London in 2007 for work begun in 1971?

Brian May abandoned his study of interplanetary dust when his band found international success in 1974, then went back and finished it over three decades later.

Which march, first played at a Yale commencement in 1905, is now heard at most American graduation ceremonies?

Pomp and Circumstance was played that day because its composer, Edward Elgar, was at the ceremony to receive an honorary doctorate of music.

Harvard and Yale met in 1852 in America's first intercollegiate sporting event, a contest in which sport?

Rowing came first: the two crews raced on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, in a contest modelled on the Oxford–Cambridge Boat Race.

Which Reed College dropout told Stanford's class of 2005 that a calligraphy course shaped the Mac's typefaces?

Steve Jobs quit Reed after one semester but kept sitting in on classes, and said the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces without that one course.

Which screen hero is a professor of archaeology at the fictional Marshall College when not chasing relics?

Indiana Jones works at a school the filmmakers named after Frank Marshall, a producer on the films.

A handshake deal with Walt Disney let which university use Donald Duck as its sports mascot?

Oregon's athletic director Leo Harris struck the informal agreement after student cartoons of the school's own duck, Puddles, began to resemble Donald.

Which Star Wars actress graduated from Harvard in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in psychology?

Natalie Portman cut back her film roles to study, and said when asked about the trade-off that she would rather be smart than a movie star.

Which university for deaf students in the US capital gave American football the huddle in the 1890s?

Gallaudet player Paul Hubbard gathered his teammates in a tight circle so that opponents could not read the sign language he used to call plays.

Which annual award for college football's most outstanding player is named after a coach who died in 1936?

The Heisman Trophy began as a prize for the best player east of the Mississippi, and went nationwide when it was renamed for John Heisman.

Which 1944 law paid tuition and living expenses for returning American veterans to attend college?

The GI Bill also gave veterans low-cost mortgages and cheap loans to start a business or farm, which helped fuel the postwar move to the suburbs.

Which 1972 US law banning sex discrimination in federally funded education reshaped women's college sports?

Title IX made no explicit mention of sports when it passed; it simply barred discrimination in any education program that takes federal money.

Ohio National Guard troops shot dead four students during a 1970 anti-war protest at which university?

Kent State's deaths fed a nationwide student strike that forced more than 450 campuses to close.

Civil War rivals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant both trained at which academy on the Hudson River?

West Point also enrolled the poet Edgar Allan Poe, who never graduated: he was court-martialed for neglecting his duties.

Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve met in 1973 as new students at which New York performing arts conservatory?

The Juilliard School took 20 freshmen that year, and the pair were the only two chosen for its Advanced Program.

Which US president, the only one to earn a PhD, ran Princeton University before entering politics?

Woodrow Wilson took his doctorate in history and government at Johns Hopkins in 1886, then taught at several colleges before Princeton put him in charge.

Which Oscar-winning film follows an MIT janitor who anonymously solves a maths problem left on a blackboard?

Good Will Hunting won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for its young stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who wrote it together.

Which satirical newspaper was started in 1988 by two University of Wisconsin–Madison students?

The Onion owes its name, by co-founder Tim Keck's account, to the onion sandwiches he and Christopher Johnson ate so often; early staff tell other stories.

Which coach, nicknamed the Wizard of Westwood, won ten NCAA basketball titles in twelve seasons at UCLA?

John Wooden's teams took seven of those titles in a row and, at their peak, won 88 games running.

Which Midwestern city has been the home of baseball's College World Series since 1950?

Omaha staged the tournament at Rosenblatt Stadium for six decades before moving it to a new ballpark in 2011.

Which Latin title is granted to a retired professor who is allowed to keep using the old rank?

Emeritus comes from a Latin verb meaning to complete one's service, though the title does not have to mean its holder has given up every duty.

Which Latin honour, meaning 'with highest praise', is the top distinction on many American college diplomas?

Summa cum laude sits one step above magna, 'with great praise'; Harvard became the first US college to award final honours in 1869.

National Lampoon's Animal House follows a rowdy fraternity at which fictional school, run by Dean Wormer?

Faber College's toga party became the film's calling card: the studio helped students on real campuses organise toga parties of their own to promote it.

Which Cambridge student comedy club, founded in 1883, launched Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and several Pythons?

Footlights won the first Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe with its 1981 revue, whose cast included Laurie, Thompson and Stephen Fry.

Which future US president served as president of Columbia University from 1948 until he took office?

Dwight D. Eisenhower took up oil painting while at Columbia, and spent part of his term away serving as NATO's first supreme commander.

Which physicist held the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge, once Isaac Newton's, from 1979 to 2009?

Stephen Hawking had to give up the chair at 67 under Cambridge's retirement rule; in Star Trek: The Next Generation it later passes to the android Data.

Which cloned animal was born in 1996 at the Roslin Institute, now part of the University of Edinburgh?

Dolly the sheep was grown from a mammary gland cell, which is why the team named her after the singer Dolly Parton.

Which Big Bang Theory actress holds a real doctorate in neuroscience, earned at UCLA in 2007?

Mayim Bialik plays the neurobiologist Amy Farrah Fowler, a discipline close to the one she studied for her own degree.

Which Blackadder star earned a master's degree in electrical engineering at Oxford in the 1970s?

Rowan Atkinson wrote his thesis on self-tuning control, and first drew national attention performing with The Oxford Revue at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Which educator became the first leader of Alabama's Tuskegee Institute in 1881, at the age of 25?

Booker T. Washington, born into slavery, opened the school on July 4 in a single room donated by a local church.

Which psychologist ran the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which students played guards and inmates?

Philip Zimbardo cast himself as the prison's superintendent and stopped the study on its sixth day, after a visiting psychologist confronted him about it.

Which new wave band grew out of a group formed at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1973?

Talking Heads began as the Artistics, the band of David Byrne and Chris Frantz, with Frantz's girlfriend and fellow student Tina Weymouth as their driver.

Which Romantic poet kept a tame bear as a Cambridge student because the rules banned pet dogs?

Lord Byron noted that the statutes said nothing about bears, and even suggested putting the animal up for a fellowship.

Which philosopher's school, founded in a grove outside Athens around 387 BC, gave English the word 'academy'?

Plato taught on a site named for the legendary hero Akademos; his pupil Aristotle studied there for twenty years before founding his own school, the Lyceum.

The academic title 'doctor' comes directly from a Latin word with which literal meaning?

Teacher is the literal sense, from the verb docere, and the first doctorates in medieval Europe were licences to teach at a university.

Which branch of the US military trains its officers beside a seventeen-spired chapel near Colorado Springs?

The Air Force finished the chapel at its academy in 1962, to a design by Walter Netsch of the architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

Hillary Rodham became the first student to speak at commencement, in 1969, at which Massachusetts women's college?

Wellesley let her speak after fellow seniors asked for a student voice at the ceremony; she followed the official speaker, Senator Edward Brooke.

Which international exchange scholarship was created in 1946 with money from sales of surplus US war property?

The Fulbright Program is named for Senator J. William Fulbright, whose bill turned the proceeds of leftover military equipment into student exchanges.

Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in 1678 at which Italian university?

Padua's bishop refused to let her take the divinity degree she sought because she was a woman, so she took philosophy instead and received it in the city's cathedral.

Which Prussian reformer founded Berlin's university on the ideal of combining research with teaching?

Wilhelm von Humboldt met great resistance to his ideas, resigned in April 1810 and was not there when the university opened that autumn.

The first message sent over the ARPANET, from a UCLA lab in 1969, crashed the system after which two letters?

LO was all that arrived: UCLA student Charley Kline was typing the command "login" when the computer at the Stanford Research Institute end crashed.

Fruit breeders at which university developed the Honeycrisp apple, released to growers in 1991?

Minnesota's breeders once had the variety slated to be discarded; it went on to become the official state fruit.

In which European country may new PhDs receive both a silk top hat and a ceremonial sword at their graduation?

Finland is the only country with a doctoral sword; the silk doctoral hat is shared with Sweden and takes the place of the square cap worn elsewhere.

A Cambridge student who gains first-class honours in the Mathematical Tripos is traditionally known as what?

Wrangler is the title; the highest scorer is the Senior Wrangler, the runner-up the Second Wrangler, and so on down the list.

Santo Tomas, holder of Asia's oldest surviving university charter, was founded under Spanish rule in which city?

Manila's archbishop, the friar Miguel de Benavides, left his library and property as its seed fund; it was founded in 1611, six years after his death.

Watson and Crick cracked DNA's structure at which Cambridge laboratory, where the electron was also discovered?

Cavendish scientists also discovered the neutron, and by 2019 thirty of the laboratory's researchers had won Nobel Prizes.

Which name is given to the private undergraduate societies housed in mansions along Princeton's Prospect Avenue?

Eating clubs double as dining halls and social houses, and they feature heavily in F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Which association of UK research universities was formed in 1994 by 17 members including Oxford and Cambridge?

The Russell Group took shape in 1994 at the Hotel Russell on Russell Square, where 17 universities met ahead of national meetings held nearby.