University

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 resultant from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning community of masters and scholars.
Because of the above definition, there is some controversy concerning 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 known 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.