Universities in Kelssek

Universities in Kelssek are institutions offering the highest level of education in the country which are accredited to grant Bachelors degrees and higher. Universities have been constituted by royal charter, ecclesiastical authority, and legislative acts. The title "university" is protected by law and only universities have the authority to award degrees. In Kelssek, "colleges" are post-secondary institutions without independent degree-granting powers and by definition not universities (the term may also refer to a sub-unit of a university, or a pretentious high school).

Kelssek has a total of 344 universities. Under the federal division of powers, education is the constitutional responsibility of the republics and legal authority over universities and educational credentials thus rests with republic governments. However, the central government is able to broadly influence policy because it provides the bulk of the funding for education through block grants. Almost all universities are public institutions; private universities exist but these are generally small institutions linked to religious organizations.

In Kelssek, universities are generally understood as falling into one of three categories: research-intensive, where the focus is placed on research and academically-oriented courses; comprehensive, which have a wide range of programs but are more oriented towards professional education, and primarily undergraduate universities which tend to have smaller student populations and are more teaching-focused.

In addition, universities are colloquially referred to as being "ancient", "brick", or "concrete" in reference to their institutional cultures, which tends to correlate with the era in which the university was founded and therefore the architecture of their campus. Ancient and research-intensive universities tend to have higher perceived prestige, but the overall system is not strongly differentiated in terms of academic standards and expectations, which are relatively even across the country.

The U10
Ten of the country's research-oriented universities formed an association known as the U10 Group in 155 FE to advocate for their interests and share resources. Although the group's membership has now expanded beyond the original ten and it is now officially called the Group of Research Universities, the name has stuck in colloquial use.