Private Universities

A private university is a university that is run without the control of any government entity. Private universities are common in Japan, United States, Bangladesh etc. but do not exist in some countries. Tuition fees at private universities tend to be much higher than at public universities.

Most private colleges and universities in the U.S. accept some government funding through grants and loans to students. Only a few remain that do not accept government funding.

Because private universities are not an extension of the government, they can engage in behaviors from which public universities as an extension of the government are prohibited.

For example, religious institutions can expressly forward their own beliefs. Some use this autonomy to teach that other religions are incorrect. They also are allowed to train clergy, which public universities may not. Both private and public universities can be nationally accredited. Some private universities are not accredited (see list of unaccredited institutions of higher learning), and their degrees are not formally recognized; some of these in turn have been characterized as diploma mills.

Private universities have a freer hand to discriminate on the basis of race, religion or gender. For example, Bob Jones University in South Carolina refused to admit African-American students until 1971, and until the year 2000 it was noted for prohibiting inter-racial relationships based on the belief that they were forbidden by the Bible.

In more recent years, affirmative action policies favored minority students - some private schools have more aggressive affirmative action than their public counterparts.

For the same reason, private universities generally have a freer hand in setting admissions policies than public institutions. Universities such as those of the Ivy League have historically based their selections on many factors other than academic performance, including "lineage," "character", and "personal" characteristics. Some observers state that these factors, intentionally or not, tended to favor applicants whose families who were part of the U. S. "power structure," and created a self-perpetuating association between certain schools and high social ranking. Thus it could be seen that graduates of some universities were statistically over represented in the Social Register. In recent years, however, prestigious private universities in the U.S. have been making a marked effort to appeal to and recruit academically talented students from underprivileged backgrounds. There are a variety of other factors, including family tradition, high test scores and high degrees of education besides the admissions process procedures that are partially responsible for this observation.

In the U.S., it is a valid generalization that many of most socially prestigious universities—such as those of the Ivy League and equivalent schools like Stanford, Duke and MIT— are private.

Most of the liberal arts colleges, such as those among the Five Colleges of Ohio, are privately controlled. Many smaller or less prestigious private universities are run by religious orders, such as Gonzaga University and Brigham Young University. Several renowned private universities are also operated by or affiliated with religious organizations, such as Duke University, the University of Notre Dame, and Georgetown University.

The U.S. system of education has also been exported to other countries. Private universities such as the American University in Cairo and the American University of Afghanistan typically offer a liberal arts curriculum to their students.