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This article was published in September 2019

Character building, academic achievement and fun, the time spent as a university student can form the most memorable years of your life.

And while the degree you pick is of course very important, the setting of your studies is just as crucial. Where you study will become the backdrop to countless adventures, so will always be special to you.

But there are some unis out there with some interesting claims to fame, from record-breaking numbers to breathtaking locations. We look at some of them.

The oldest

You can’t put a date on knowledge, and for as long as we humans have been curious about stuff, it seems there have been places to learn more about it.

In 859 AD, the University of Karueein was founded in Fez, in Morocco. It still operates today and is recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest university in the world.

Just over 200 years later, in 1088 to be more precise, the University of Bologna opened in Italy, and is recognised as the oldest in Europe.

And the oldest in the UK? That would be the University of Oxford. It was definitely open to students in some form in 1096, although its exact foundation date remains unclear. Regardless, it has still produced 28 British Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson is the most recent, a graduate of Balliol College. The first was the Earl of Wilmington, a Trinity College alumni, who became PM in 1742.

Biggest number of students

With the world’s second largest population at over 1.3 billion inhabitants, it should perhaps be no surprise that the university with the largest number of enrolled students is in India.

The Indira Gandhi National Open University was established in 1985 to encourage distance learning, similar to the teaching model of the UK’s Open University. It's named after the country’s only female Prime Minister to date.

The most recent update to its website, in 2014, states that more than three million students in India and other countries are registered for study. Other estimates have placed this closer to five million, although this is not verified by any official sources.

The California Community College system in the USA is the next biggest, with 2.1 million students registered for study across 115 colleges in the state.

Wealthiest university

The oldest university in the USA (or college, as they are known Stateside) is also recognised by Guinness World Records as the wealthiest in the world.

Harvard in Massachussetts was recorded as having £26 billion in endowments in 2009. An endowment is money donated to a university, often by an individual, for investment in future projects such as setting up scholarships.

A study place at Harvard is much sought-after due to the university’s international reputation. Graduates include former US presidents Barack Obama, John F Kennedy and Franklin D Roosevelt, as well as the actor Matt Damon and the entrepreneur Bill Gates.

Most unusual location

There’s no official record for a university based somewhere that starts conversations, but Iceland’s Bifröst campus has to be in with a shot of the title.

Based in a valley dominated by the Grábrók volcano, the university’s website says students can walk from campus to its summit and back "in about 40 minutes", as long as they adopt a brisk pace.

It’s best known for teaching business, law and social sciences and is approximately 100km from the Icelandic capital Reykjavik.

The (soon-to-be) highest university facility

Volcanoes are becoming a recurring theme here. In Chile, the University of Atacama has plans to open a research laboratory on the Ojos del Salado volcano, at 5,100 metres above sea level and close to the border with Argentina. If it is built, it will be the highest on the planet.

Ojos del Salado is active, making the area ideal for research in astronomy, geology, atmospheric studies and even medicine, among other subjects. Its last eruption was estimated at 700 AD and it emitted gas and ashes as recently as 1993.

The new facility will be 50 metres higher in altitude than the current highest facility, the Pyramid International Laboratory in Nepal, which is 5,050 meters above sea level.

And while going to a university which is a world beater due to its dimensions, age, altitude or population can be a great conversation starter, as long as you come away with the qualifications and experience you want, that’s the only record that matters.