Because of the definition above, the oldest universities in the world were all European, because to allot school degrees was not a habit of the older establishments of the study in Asia and Africa. However, the establishments of a higher study considerably older than the European universities most ancient existed in the countries such as China, Egypt and India. Some of them are still in function today. The academy, founded in 387 BEFORE JESUS CHRIST by the Greek philosopher Plato in the plantation of Academos close to Athens, taught with its students philosophy, mathematics, and the gymnastics, and is sometimes considered a precursor of the modern European universities.

Other Greek cities with the notable educational establishments include Kos (the house of Hippocrates), which had a medical school, and Rhodos, which had the philosophical schools. The "university the "Greek antique most famous was the museum and the library of Alexandria. Approximately thousand years after Plato, the establishments supporting a resemblance at the modern university existed in Perse and the Islamic world, in particular the academy of Gundishapur and also posterior university of Al Azhar in Cairo. One of the Asian establishments most significant resembling a university, beside the academy Persian of Gundishapur, was Nalanda, in Bihar, India, where the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna of the second century was based.