University of Ljubljana

University of Ljubljana

Univerza v Ljubljani
Latin: Universitas Labacensis
Type	Public
Established	1919
Chancellor	Ivan Svetlik
Administrative staff	3,500
Students	42,922
Undergraduates	54,000
Postgraduates	7,000
Location	Ljubljana, Slovenia
Website	www.uni-lj.si

The University of Ljubljana (Slovene: Univerza v Ljubljani [uniʋɛ́ːrza w ljubljàːni], acronym: UL, Latin: Universitas Labacensis) is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With over 63,000 enrolled undergraduate and graduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.

Although certain academies (notably of philosophy and theology) were established as Jesuitical higher education in what now is Slovenia as early as the seventeenth century, the first university was founded in 1810 under the Écoles centrales of the French imperial administration of the Illyrian provinces. That university was disbanded in 1813, when Austria regained territorial control.

During the second half of the 19th century, several political claims for the establishment of a Slovene language university in Ljubljana were made. They gained momentum in the fin de siècle era, when a considerable number of renowned Slovene academians worked throughout Central Europe, while ever more numerous Slovenian students were enrolled in foreign-language universities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly in the Austrian and Czech lands (Charles University in Prague or University of Olomouc, of which Slovene philosopher Franc Samuel Karpe became the rector in 1781). In the 1890s, a unified board for the establishment of a Slovenian university was founded, with Ivan Hribar, Henrik Tuma, and Aleš Ušeničnik as its main leaders. In 1898, the Carniolan regional parliament established a scholarship for all those students who were planning a habilitation under the condition that they would accept a post at Ljubljana University when founded. In this way, a list of suitable faculty started to emerge.