This random university generator lets you pick a random university from a pool of 2,855 institutions across the United States and the rest of the world.
Universities are institutions of higher education that offer a wide range of programs in fields like science, arts, business, and engineering. Around the world, there are thousands of universities, each with its own strengths and specialties.
Whether you’re exploring study options or just curious, this random university generator can help you discover schools you may not have heard of. You can choose from global results or narrow your search to just American universities.
Random University Generator
This university randomizer includes all the institutions listed on Times Higher Education’s website. It features over 2,000 ranked universities from the World University Rankings, plus more than 700 unranked universities from around the globe.
Each result shows the university’s global ranking (if applicable) and includes a direct link to a Google search, so you can easily learn more about it.
By default, the randomizer pulls from all 2,855 universities in countries around the world. You can also toggle the “U.S. Only” button to limit your search to 182 random universities in the United States.
Click the button below to get your random university!
Your random university is…
Universities of America and the World
Despite popular interest, this is the only large-scale random university generator I know of. There’s a simple reason for that—it takes a huge amount of effort to build.
There are roughly 50,000 universities in the world, but no complete and accessible list exists. For this randomizer, I used Times Higher Education’s dataset, which focuses on highly reputed institutions but still represents only about 5 percent of the global total. And I couldn’t just copy and paste the data—I spent hours filtering and editing it to make it usable for a random university picker.
The background photo in this generator features the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at my alma mater, the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. The building was designed by Finland’s most famous architect, Alvar Aalto, and the statue in front depicts legendary long-distance runner Paavo Nurmi, who once held the record for most Olympic gold metals.
I originally used the photo in a blog post called “Hometown Tourist in Jyväskylä,” which I wrote just before heading off on a two-year trip around the world.
This website, Arimo Travels, previously focused on my own travels all over the world. Still, randomness has always been a part of its DNA.
After visiting a completely random place anywhere in the world, I started creating random generators about all sorts of things. Some like this one and a UNESCO site generator deal with specific types of places, but the topics vary from rock paper scissors to three-digit numbers.
You can find all 100+ randomizers here.