University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880 by Robert Maclay Widney, it is the oldest private research university in California. The university is composed of one liberal arts school, the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and 22 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, enrolling roughly 21,000 undergraduate and 28,500 post-graduate students from all fifty U.S. states and more than 115 countries. It is a member of the Association of American Universities, which it joined in 1969.
Robert Maclay Widney, founder of the university, photographed in 1885.
The Widney Alumni House, the campus's first building.
The Doheny Library
The Center for International and Public Affairs, topped by a 5,500 lb (2,500 kg) globe, is the tallest structure on campus. Built under the second master plan, it reflects a trend towards modernism during that period.
A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are "the key sites of knowledge production", along with "intergenerational knowledge transfer and the certification of new knowledge" through the awarding of doctoral degrees, and continue to be "the very center of scientific productivity". They can be public or private, and often have well-known brand names.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) is responsible for the Humboldtian model of higher education.
Nuclear research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a research university, in Madison, Wisconsin, United States, May 2005
Switzerland spends 0.76% of GDP on university research funding as of 2017, some 3.8x the ratio of the United States (0.20%). ETH Zurich, founded in 1854, is the leading Swiss research university by its number of scholars and publications.
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, founded in 1876, is considered the first research university in the United States and as of fiscal year 2020 had been the national leader in annual research and development spending for over four decades.