University of Basel

The University of Basel is Switzerland's oldest university, founded in 1460 in Basel on the Rhine, at the border with France and Germany. It grew from a late-medieval foundation into a public cantonal university rather than a federal technical institute. The historic buildings stand in the old town, while science and medicine occupy larger sites including the medical campus at Schallematteli.

Seven faculties cover theology, law, medicine, humanities and social sciences, science, business and economics, and psychology. Life sciences and chemistry define much of graduate research, in a city long tied to the pharmaceutical industry. The Biozentrum is the main hub for molecular and cell biology. University Hospital Basel, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and the nearby Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research sit in the same cluster.

About 13,000 students are enrolled, with a high graduate share for a compact European university. More than 20 percent of students are international, many from Germany and France as well as farther away. Erasmus of Rotterdam taught here in the sixteenth century. Friedrich Nietzsche held the chair of classical philology, and mathematician Leonhard Euler studied at the university.

Graduate education follows the Bologna model of master's degrees and doctoral research, often inside structured PhD programs in the life sciences, economics, and the humanities. Bachelor teaching is mainly in German; many science master's and doctoral courses are in English. The year is divided into autumn and spring semesters. Doctoral funding commonly comes from Swiss National Science Foundation grants and assistantships. Basel is a walkable city of about 180,000 oriented toward hospitals, labs, and the river.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Basel lists 3 graduate programs across 3 subjects: 2 master's programs and 1 doctoral program, with the widest choice in biology, economics and physics. University of Basel holds rank 188 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.