The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, also known as U of I, University of Illinois, UIUC , or simply Illinois, is a public research-intensive university in the U.S. state of Illinois. Founded in 1867 as a land-grant institution in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana (together known as Champaign-Urbana), it is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system and a founding member of the Big Ten Conference.
The University of Illinois is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified as a R1 Doctoral Research University under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, which denotes the highest research activity. In fiscal year 2015, total research expedentures at Illinois totaled $640 million.The campus library system possesses the second-largest university library in the United States after Harvard University. The university also hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and is home to the fastest supercomputer on a university campus.
The university comprises 17 colleges that offer more than 150 programs of study. Additionally, the university operates an extensionthat offers educational programs to more than 1.5 million registrants per year around the state of Illinois and beyond. The university holds 647 buildings on 4,552 acres (1,842 ha) and its annual operating budget in 2016 was over $2 billion. Even though Illinois is a public university, only about 12% of the budget comes from the state; the balance is provided mostly by roughly equal parts student tuition and research grants.
University rankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report, Times Higher Education and the Academic Ranking of World Universities rank Illinois among the top 50 universities in the world, and one of the top 5 engineering schools in the world.