The University of Cambridge is a collegiate research university in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Founded in 1209and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's fourth-oldest surviving university. The university grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford after a dispute with the townspeople. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. Cambridge is ranked among the most prestigious universities in the world. y the late 12th century, the Cambridge area already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation, due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. 

However, it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have led to the establishment of the university: three Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman, without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities, who would normally take precedence (and pardon the scholars) in such a case, but were at that time in conflict with King John. In addition to the 31 colleges, the university is made up of over 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates and other institutions. Members of these are usually also members of one of the colleges and responsibility for running the entire academic programme of the university is divided among them.

Faculties:

• Arts and Humanities
• Biological Sciences
• Clinical Medicine
• Humanities and Social Sciences
• Physical Sciences
• Technology

In 2000, Bill Gates of Microsoft donated US$210 million through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to endow the Gates Scholarships for students from outside the UK seeking postgraduate study at Cambridge. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the central university, excluding colleges, had a total income of £2.192 billion, of which £592.4 million was from research grants and contracts. All students at the University of Cambridge are represented by Cambridge Students' Union. The SU was founded in 2020 as a merger of two existing Student Unions in Cambridge: CUSU (the Cambridge University Students‘ Union) and the GU (the Graduate Union). CUSU previously represented all University students, and the GU solely represented graduate students.