University of Oxford

The domed Radcliffe Camera, seen from the tower of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford, England. Still a working reading room of the Bodleian Library, it is the image most people picture when they think of the university. Oxford has no founding date at all. Teaching existed there in some form by 1096, and the university grew quickly from 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris. That makes it the oldest university in the English-speaking world, though when its scattered masters became a university is anyone's guess.