World's largest universities

This list of worlds largest universities by enrollment includes total active enrollment across all campuses (including off campus study). Enrollment numbers listed are the sum of undergraduate and graduate students in active enrollment (eg. in first semester of academic year; not cumulative over the life of the institution). The initial list of the world's largest universities ('mega-universities') was developed by Sir John Daniel in his seminal text, 'The Mega-universities and Knowledge Media' (1996, Routledge). Since then, many of these universities have grown considerably in size, and others have joined the list. Universities included below confer degrees of bachelor-level or higher and either share a central board of governance and a single figurehead chancellor or confer degrees with the same institution name.

It should be noted that many of these universities, particularly those in the United States, are actually systems of separate university campuses and may not accurately represent a comparable study body. For example, the enrollment listed for the University of California is the population of the entire student body in the University of California system, which is composed of several individual campuses statewide. All University of California campuses are entitled "University of California" and then denoted further by the campus location, such as "University of California, Santa Cruz". This is in contrast with the public university system of Iowa, for example, which is composed of many independently named universities, such as "Iowa State University" or "University of Iowa".

References

ee also

* List of largest United States universities by undergraduate enrollment