Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava

Located in Bratislava, Slovakia, Comenius University is the largest university in this region. Established in 1919 in Czechoslovakia, the university was named after teacher and philosopher, Jan Amos Comenius. The exclusive mission of the university is to obtain and propagate knowledge and enlightenment to its students and the community-at-large. Comenius believed that education expands beyond just the classroom and reaches to philosophy and world educational experiences. He believed the world was a classroom. He introduced the country to a four-level educational system with elementary, intermediate, advanced and university studies based on the age of the student. A large university, by today’s standards, has over 30 thousands students who attend school in Bratislava and over 2,000 faculty members instructing them. Students who attend Comenius do not pay tuition. Rather the university is government supported. The school offers a college of medicine, law, philosophy, humanities, education, pharmacy, physical education, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. Additionally, in 1941, the Roman Catholic Church, in collaboration with the university, opened the school of Theology. The transformation of Slovakian society to a free market economy in the 1990s resulted in a need for economics education and, the university opened a school of management and financial services as a result. The university continues to grow today.