The University of Padua is a public institution that was founded in 1222. It is located in the city of Padua, in northeast Italy, roughly 25 miles west of Venice. In a recent year, around 60,000 students attended the university. The primary language of instruction at the institution is Italian, but some degree programs – mostly at the graduate level – are taught in English. Tuition costs the same for Italian and international students, and housing is available for both undergraduate and graduate students through the organization ESU di Padova.
The university has eight schools: agricultural sciences and veterinary medicine, economics and political science, law, engineering, medicine, psychology, science, and human and social sciences and cultural heritage. The university's academic year begins in October and runs into July. The institution uses both semester- and trimester-based academic calendars, depending on the school or program.
In addition to standard degree programs, the University of Padua offers joint and double degree programs. These programs are run in collaboration with other international universities, such as Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7 in France and Romania's Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai. Thirty high-achieving students are admitted to the university’s Galilean School of Higher Education each year, where – in addition to their regular degree courses – they attend supplemental courses and seminars. Some of the university’s many research centers include the CRIBI Biotechnology Center, the Cognitive Neuroscience Center and the Center of Studies and Activities for Space "Giuseppe Colombo."
Established in 1222, the University of Padua (Padova in Italian) is the second oldest university in Italy, after Bologna, and one of the earliest universities in the world. It was originally founded as a school of law by a group of scholars and students who had come from Bologna in pursuit of greater academic freedom.
Today, Padua continues to be one of the most prominent universities in Italy and Europe. It is made up of 32 departments and eight schools, which co-ordinate the courses managed by each department, as well as 49 specialisation schools and 43 research and service centres.
Comprising Schools of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Economics and Political Science, Law, Engineering, Medicine, Psychology, Science, and Human and Social Sciences and Cultural Heritage, Padua also runs a host of centres, research organisations and science and technology hubs that are affiliated with the university. Its estate is also home to a university hospital, one museum, a library, a school of excellence and 14 halls of residence.
Around 60,000 students – 40,000 undergraduates and 20,000 postgraduates – are enrolled at Padua. They share the university’s medieval buildings with more than 20,000 professors and research staff, as well as a commitment to the continuation of Padua’s longstanding tradition of academic innovation.
The university’s total budget is over €600 million with around €60 million a year spent on research.
Padua is part a network of historical research universities known as the Coimbra Group. Other institutions that are part of this network include the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg, Salamanca, Jena, Leuven and Leiden.
Along with such universities as Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, that of Padua was one of the first to exemplify the idea of a Gymnasium Omnium Disciplinarum - an educational model that can now be seen throughout the world. Though the university's year of foundation is generally given as 1222, that in fact only marks the date from which there are records of a ?fixed and publicly recognised university established within the city? and so the actual foundation can be dated even early, to a period when a number of professors and students had left the University of Bologna as a result of ?offences to academic freedom and the failure to observe the privileges that had been guaranteed to teachers and pupils?. Such exchanges of personnel and students - together with the similarities in the Statutes of the two foundations - reveal that Padua placed a certain importance on this link with what was the oldest university in the world, against which it was however very soon setting itself up as a rival (and even centuries later that rivalry has lost none of its edge). Padua University was not founded as the result of a charter granted by pope of...
