Public university

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Named America's top graduate school by the National Research Council, the University of California, Berkeley is a public university.
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Named America's top graduate school by the National Research Council, the University of California, Berkeley is a public university.
All except one of the British universities are public, including Oxford & Cambridge.
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All except one of the British universities are public, including Oxford & Cambridge.

A public university is an institution of university higher education that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or regional government. In places such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Portugal, the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe, most significant universities are public, while in the United States and Japan, both public and private universities are common. In communist states such as the People's Republic of China and Cuba, virtually all universities are state-run. Many major public universities around the world were formerly private or religious institutions.

Public university tuition, if any, is typically lower than in private universities.

In the United States, most public universities are state universities, which are founded and operated by state government entities. Every U.S. state has at least one public university to its name, and the largest states have more than a dozen. States generally charge higher tuition to out-of-state students, a practice which the United States Supreme Court has deemed constitutional because the state is acting as a market participant providing a service, rather than protecting a fundamental right.

It has never been determined whether the U.S. Constitution would allow the federal government to establish a federal university system, but the only federally chartered universities that currently exist are those under the auspices of the U.S. military, such as West Point, the Naval Academy and the United States Air Force Academy.

In Canada and Germany, education, including the administration of universities, is the responsibility of the individual provinces (in Canada) or Bundesländer (in Germany).

In Taiwan, public ("national") universities are considered to be generally more prestigious than private universities and require higher entrance examination scores. This was also the case all over China when the Republic of China still controlled mainland China.

While historically in the United States, the bulk of the highest-ranked institutions have been private, public institutions like the University of Michigan, the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, and the University of Virginia have also proven to be some of the most prestigious in the country. World-wide, public institutions like Beijing University, ETH Zurich, Oxford, Cambridge, and Tokyo University are also held in simlar esteem. In fact, in a recent worldwide university study done by the London Times Educational Supplement, four of the top 10 universities were public, with UC Berkeley 2nd, Cambridge and Oxford 5th and 6th, and ETH Zurich rounding out the top 10. World rankings by Shanghai Jiaotong University came up with similar findings.

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