The Alma Mater Studiorum -University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is the first university in the Western world.
Since the beginning, internationalization has been one of the most important missions for the University of Bologna, which welcomes today more than 6500 international students, coming from around 130 countries. In the last academic year, around 1450 Asian students chose and enrolled at the University of Bologna. The University of Bologna has more than eighty active mobility agreements with Universities in several Asian countries, such as China, Korea, Japan, Myanmar, India, Indonesia and Taiwan. Based on these agreements, students coming from the Asian continent can study at the University of Bologna and vice versa.
The University of Bologna offers specific programs for Chinese students, such as the Marco Polo Program and the PhD Program in collaboration with the China Scholarship Council.
The University of Bologna has a rich study offer dedicated to the Asian continent, offering First and Second Cycle Degrees completely dedicated to Asia, as well as single courses on the continent. The language offer of the Department of Modern Languages, Literature, and Cultures includes courses of Chinese and Japanese, as well as courses on philology, literature, sociology, history, philosophy, and law of Asian countries. The study offer of the University of Bologna is compounded with courses about the political, economic, and socio-political dynamics of the Asian countries.
The Asia Institute intends to acts as a link for the several courses offered by different departments of the University of Bologna.