Universities in Kelssek

Universities in Kelssek refers to institutions offering the highest level of education in the country which are accredited to grant Bachelor degrees and higher. Many of these are simultaneously the major institutions of scientific research and development of the arts and humanities. Under the federal division of powers, education is the constitutional responsibility of the provinces. In practice, 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.