{{short description|Public university in Myanmar}} {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2015}} {{Infobox university | name = University of Yangon | native_name = {{lang|my|ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်}}<br />{{IPA|my|jàɰ̃ɡòʊɰ̃ tɛʔkəθò|IPA}} | image = Seal of the University of Yangon.png | image_size = 150px | caption = Seal of the University of Yangon | motto = {{lang|my|နတ္ထိ ဝိဇ္ဇာ သမံ မိတ္တံ}}<br />(''{{langx|pi|Natthi vijjā samaṃ mittaṃ}}'')<ref>{{cite news |last=Nyan Tun|date=15 December 2020| title=The motto of the University of Yangon and the influence of Pali |url=https://www.myanmardigitalnewspaper.com/en/motto-university-yangon-and-influence-pali |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=en}}</ref> | mottoeng = There is no friend like knowledge | established = {{start date and age|df=yes|01|12|1920}} | type = Public | rector = Dr. Tin Maung Tun | undergrad = 2220 (As of 2022-2023 AY)<ref name=ss>{{cite web |title=Yangon University {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/yangon-university/ |website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> | postgrad = 603 (As of 2022-2023 AY)<ref name="ss" /> | city = Kamayut Township, Yangon | state = Yangon Region | country = Myanmar | coordinates = {{coord|16|49|48|N|96|08|06|E|region:MM_type:edu|display=inline,title}} | campus = Urban | former_names = {{plainlist| * University of Rangoon (1920-1964) * Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (1964-1989)}} | website = {{URL|uy.edu.mm}}| | faculty = 440 (As of 2022-2023 AY)<ref name="ss" /> | affiliations ={{plainlist| *ASEAN University Network (AUN) *Asian Universities Alliance (AUA) *Silk-road Universities Network (SUN)}} }}
The '''University of Yangon''' (also known as '''Yangon University'''; {{langx|my|ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်}}, {{IPA|my|jàɰ̃ɡòʊɰ̃ tɛʔkəθò|pron}}; formerly the '''University of Rangoon''' and '''Rangoon Arts and Sciences University''') is a public university in Yangon, Myanmar. Located in Kamayut Township on the southwestern bank of Inya Lake, it is the country's oldest university and celebrated its centenary in 2020.
The university originated in Rangoon College and Judson College and was established under the University of Rangoon Act 1920. Modelled in part on British universities, it became closely associated with Burmese nationalism, and student strikes at the university in 1920, 1936, and 1938 were significant events in the country's anti-colonial movement. In the 1950s, the University of Rangoon was regarded as one of the leading universities in Asia.
After the 1962 Burmese coup d'état, the university was reorganised as Rangoon Arts and Sciences University, stripped of its autonomy, and its faculties were separated into specialised institutions. Its campus remained a focal point of political protest, including during the 1962 Rangoon University protests, the U Thant funeral crisis, and the 8888 Uprising. Undergraduate programmes were suspended from 1996 for nearly two decades before the university gradually reopened after the political reforms of the 2010s.
The university now comprises 21 departments and the Universities' Research Centre, and offers undergraduate, honours, master's, diploma, and doctoral programmes. Its campus is noted for such landmarks as the Convocation Hall, Judson Church, and the historic students' union site. Among its alumni are numerous prominent political and intellectual figures, including Aung San, U Nu, Ba Maw, U Thant, and several presidents and prime ministers of Myanmar.
==History== ===Founding and early history=== thumb|left|Rangoon College in the early 1900s, before it merged with Judson College
The University of Yangon originated in Rangoon College and Judson College.<ref name=Judson>{{cite news |last1=Kyaw Nyunt |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်၏ ဂျပ်ဆင်ကောလိပ် {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/news/9475 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm |date=12 December 2020 |language=en}}</ref> In 1884, the British government established the Education Syndicate as part of its plan to found Rangoon College as an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta.{{sfn|Khin Maung Kyi|2000|p=150}}{{sfn|James|2005|p=96}} Management of the college was entrusted to the syndicate in 1885–1886 under the Company Acts.{{sfn|James|2005|p=96}} In 1904, the institution was renamed Government College, Rangoon, and placed under direct government supervision.{{sfn|James|2005|p=96}} Judson College was founded by the American Baptist Mission as Rangoon Karen College on 28 May 1878, and was later renamed Baptist College before becoming Judson College.<ref name=Judson/> On 1 December 1920,<ref name=IR2019>{{cite news |last1=Lei |first1=Lei |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ရာပြည့်ပွဲ အကြို လှုပ်ရှားမှုများ တနှစ်ပတ်လုံး လုပ်မည် |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2019/07/11/197699.html |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=11 July 2019 |ref=Ir 2019}}</ref> the University of Rangoon was established with two constituent colleges, University College and Judson College.<ref name=AMO>{{cite news |last=Aung Myint Oo |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ရာပြည့်အထိမ်းအမှတ် ဂုဏ်ပြုဆောင်းပါး |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiul-raapnnyathimamtt-gunnpucheaangp-1 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |date=18 October 2020 |language=my}}</ref> In response to demands from the Young Men's Buddhist Association (YMBA), one of the leading political organisations of the time, the University of Rangoon was established under the University of Rangoon Act 1920.<ref name=BT>{{cite journal |last1=Boe Thein |title=Student Strikes for Education Reform, 1920-2015 |journal=Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship |date=2023 |volume=3 |url=https://ijbs.online/journal-issues/2023-vol-3-%e1%80%a1%e1%80%90%e1%80%bd%e1%80%b2-%e1%81%83/student-strikes-for-education-reform-1920-2015/ |access-date=8 March 2026}}</ref> Its first chancellor was the Governor of British Burma, Sir Reginald Craddock, and the university opened with an enrolment of 829 students.{{sfn|James|2005|p=97}} The landscaping was supervised by Sir Harcourt Butler, and the buildings were inspired by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.{{sfn|Khin Maung Kyi|2000|p=150}}<ref name=MY>{{cite news |last=Moe Yan |first=Maung|title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ရာပြည့် သမိုင်းရင်ခုန်သံ |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiulraapnny-smiungrngkhunsn |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |date=24 December 2019 |language=my}}</ref> Its budget was funded by officially recognised casinos, known as ''our-day'', across the country.<ref name=BBCYU>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ကြောင့် မြန်မာပြည် ဘာတွေပြောင်းခဲ့သလဲ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-42181316 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |date=30 November 2017 |language=my}}</ref>
The first student strike, organised by a committee of 26 students in support of 16 demands, took place on 5 December 1920 in protest against restrictions that disadvantaged children from middle- and lower-class families.<ref name="BT" /> The movement marked the beginning of Burma's independence movement and is commemorated as the country's National Day.<ref>{{cite news |title=သတိမမူမိတဲ့ အမျိုးသားနေ့ရာပြည့်နဲ့ နိုးထလာတဲ့ မြန်မာအမျိုးသားရေးဝါဒ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-55151802 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref> As a result of the strike, the University Act was amended in 1924 to allow the university to affiliate institutions elsewhere in Burma.{{sfn|James|2005|p=98}} On 4 July 1925, Mandalay Intermediate College became the first affiliated college; after independence, it developed into Mandalay University.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Thet Htoo Aung |title=မန္တလေးတက္ကသိုလ် နှစ် ၁၀၀ ပြည့် အကြိုပွဲတော် ကျင်းပ |url=https://news-eleven.com/article/304142 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd |date=4 July 2025 |language=my}}</ref><ref name=BBCMU>{{cite news |title=မန္တလေး သီးခြားတက္ကသိုလ် နှစ် ၆ဝ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-44302899 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref> By 1930, the university had added the Teachers’ Training College and the Medical College as constituent colleges;{{sfn|James|2005|p=98}} the Agricultural College was added in 1938.<ref name=moa>{{cite web | url=http://myanmargeneva.org/e-com/Agri/expind/agri-index/myanmar.com/Ministry/agriculture/Organi/yua.htm | title=Yezin Agricultural University | publisher=Ministry of Agriculture | access-date=2008-12-13 | archive-date=2010-03-29 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100329010628/http://myanmargeneva.org/e-com/Agri/expind/agri-index/myanmar.com/Ministry/agriculture/Organi/yua.htm | url-status=dead }}</ref> The second student strike occurred on 21 February 1936<ref name="BT" /> after the president of the Rangoon University Students’ Union (RUSU), U Nu, was expelled for publicly criticising the college principal.{{sfn|James|2005|p=99}} Another strike took place in 1938 over delays in amending the University Act.<ref name="BT" /> Later that year, students joined a nationwide strike by students and workers known as the 1300 Revolution.<ref>{{cite news |title=၇၈ နှစ်မြောက် ၁၃၀၀ ပြည့် အရေးတော်ပုံ မေဒေး(သို့မဟုတ်)ကမ္ဘာ့အလုပ်သမားနေ့ |url=https://news-eleven.com/article/273739 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd |language=my}}</ref> During a protest on 20 December 1938, a college student, Bo Aung Kyaw, was killed.<ref>{{cite news |title=ဗိုလ်အောင်ကျော်ရဲ့ တပ်ဘက် အရပ်ဘက်သူငယ်ချင်းများ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-46634582 |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref> In 1939, an amended University Act provided for an elected chancellor,{{sfn|James|2005|p=99}} and Pe Maung Tin became the first Burmese chancellor.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lei |first1=Lei |title=ဆရာကြီး ဦးဖေမောင်တင် ကြေးရုပ်တုထားရှိရန် ခွင့်ပြုချက်ရပြီ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2019/09/25/204867.html |access-date=8 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=25 September 2019}}</ref>
===World War II and post-independence period=== [[File:RangoonUniversityAdministrationBuilding.jpg|thumb|The university suffered damage during World War II]]
As Burma came under Japanese occupation following the outbreak of the Second World War, the university was closed on 15 January 1942 and reopened on 1 August 1943 as the State University under Ba Maw's government, with Pe Maung Tin serving as university president.{{sfn|James|2005|p=99}} After the British reoccupied the country, the university became an Interim University in 1946. Following the war, its colleges were reorganised on a unitary basis into the faculties of Arts, Science, Law, Medical Science, Education, and Engineering, with Agriculture, Social Science, and Forestry added later.{{sfn|James|2005|p=99}} Htin Aung was appointed the university's first rector.<ref name=BBCYU/>
After independence, Mandalay Intermediate College became Mandalay University College as an affiliated institution of Rangoon University, and ultimately attained separate university status in 1958.<ref name=BBCMU/>{{sfn|James|2005|p=99}} Other intermediate colleges were established throughout the country: Moulmein in 1953; Kyaukpyu in 1954; Yankin, Hteedan, and Magwe in 1955; and Bassein in 1958. The Defence Services Academy in Bahtoo Station was moved to Pyin Oo Lwin in 1955 and placed under the university.<ref name=MY />
During this period, the University of Rangoon was regarded as one of the leading universities in Asia,<ref name=IR2019/> and enhanced its standing as a centre of academic excellence through collaboration with American universities in business administration and with the Soviet Union in engineering.{{sfn|Khin Maung Kyi|2000|p=151}}
===Under military rule=== thumb|7 July 1962 peaceful march from Convocation Hall on Chancellor Road
Following the 1962 military coup led by Ne Win, the university was renamed Rangoon Arts and Sciences University (RASU) in 1964.<ref name="AMO" /> The new socialist government placed it under the central control of the Directorate of Higher Education, abolished its autonomy, and separated its faculties from the parent institution to re-establish them as smaller universities, including the institutes of Medicine, Education, Technology, and Economics.{{sfn|Khin Maung Kyi|2000|pp=151-2}} The purpose of this reorganisation was to prevent the emergence of student agitation against the regime by placing students under the close supervision of subject-based institutions, whose teachers were made responsible for maintaining order and discipline on each campus.{{sfn|Khin Maung Kyi|2000|p=153}} Thereafter, the practice by which a senior government official served as chancellor came to an end; the last chancellor was Colonel Hla Han, the minister for education and health.<ref name="BBCYU" />
On 7 July 1962, a student uprising broke out in protest against 22 newly introduced hostel rules that restricted students’ political activities; dozens of students were shot during the protest, and the students’ union building was destroyed the following morning.<ref>{{cite news |title=ဆဲဗင်းဇူလိုင် သိမှတ်ဖွယ်ရာများ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-40523727 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=ဆဲဗင်းဇူလိုင်သမိုင်းကို လူငယ်တွေ သိကြရဲ့လား |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-44753876 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |date=7 July 2018 |language=my}}</ref> In 1989, the State Law and Order Restoration Council renamed the institution the University of Yangon under the Adaptation of Expressions Law.<ref>{{cite news |title=Who, What, Why: Should it be Burma or Myanmar? |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16000467 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=BBC News |date=2 December 2011}}</ref> After the university had repeatedly served as a focal point of anti-government protest, including during the U Thant funeral crisis in 1974 and the 8888 Uprising in 1988, undergraduate programmes were suspended from 1996, and only postgraduate and diploma courses were offered for nearly two decades,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Yan Paing |title=ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ် ပြန်လည် ဝေစည်တော့မလား |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2013/06/21/42717.html |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=21 June 2013}}</ref> in order to prevent the university from again becoming a threat to the military regime’s supremacy.<ref name=reopen>{{cite news |last1=Aye Aye Win |title=ဘွဲ့ကြိုကျောင်းသားများ ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ပြန်လက်ခံ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2013/12/06/51835.html |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=6 December 2013}}</ref>
===Post-2011 reforms=== thumb|Students protesting at Yangon University in 2014
Aung San Suu Kyi, then an opposition leader and member of parliament, proposed the drafting of a new university law and the upgrading and renovation of the University of Yangon (main campus) on 27 November 2012.<ref name=upgrade>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် နှစ် (၁၀၀) ပြည့် ရာပြည့်သဘင်အထိမ်းအမှတ်အခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပ {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/news/8483 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm |language=en}}</ref> Although the then minister of education opposed the formation of a separate committee, the proposal passed the Hluttaw with 248 votes in favour.<ref>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ် မွမ်းမံရေး စတော့မယ် - BBC Burmese - မြန်မာ့ရေးရာ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma/2012/12/121227_rangoon_university |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=www.bbc.com|language=my}}</ref> The Yangon University Upgrading and Restoration Committee was subsequently formed, with Aung San Suu Kyi as its chair.<ref name="upgrade" />
The university reopened its main campus to undergraduate classes in December 2013<ref name="reopen" /> and the Hlaing campus in 2017.<ref name=VOAH>{{cite news |title=တဖန်သက်ဝင်လာတဲ့ လှိုင်တက္ကသိုလ် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/burma-forum-rebirth-of-yangon-university-hlaing-campus/4177367.html |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=VOA Burmese |date=25 December 2017 |language=my}}</ref> Since its reopening, the university has been designated a centre of excellence (CoE),{{sfn|Fiori|Proserpio|2021|p=62}} and it regained its autonomy in 2020 together with 15 other universities.<ref>{{cite news |title=ကျွန်တော်နဲ့ တက္ကသိုလ်ပညာရေး {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/article/6016 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm}}</ref>
On 18 November 2014, students protested against the National Education Bill introduced by Thein Sein's government, opposing what they saw as its overly centralised approach to education. As a result, a bill amending the National Education Law was passed by the Hluttaw, and teachers' and students' unions were legally recognised.<ref name="BT" />
The university celebrated its centenary in 2020, with the ceremony opened by Aung San Suu Kyi in her capacity as chair of the Steering Committee to Hold the Centenary of Yangon University.<ref>{{cite news |title=Yangon University Centenary a heartbeat away |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/en/yangon-university-centenary-heartbeat-away |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=en}}</ref> At the committee's first meeting in 2019, she expressed her hope that the university would restore its former stature and surpass it.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lei |first1=Lei |title=Celebrations Scheduled for Yangon U Centennial Run-Up |url=https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/celebrations-scheduled-for-yangon-u-centennial-run-up.html |access-date=9 March 2026 |date=15 July 2019}}</ref>
==Campus== {{multiple image | align = left | image1 = Convocation Hall, Universität Rangun, Myanmar, (Auditorium).jpg | width1 = 150 | alt1 = | caption1 = | image2 = Convocation Hall.jpg | width2 = 170 | alt2 = | caption2 = | footer = The Convocation Hall }} The University of Yangon is located in Kamayut Township, Yangon, on the southwestern bank of Inya Lake,<ref>{{cite news |last1=Myin Maung Soe |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်နှင့် အင်းလျားကန်သာ |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/rnkunttkksiulnng-anglaaknsaa |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm |date=11 May 2020}}</ref> bounded by Inya Road to the east and north, University Avenue Road to the south, and Pyay Road to the west.<ref>{{cite web |title=Charter (Draft) {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/charter-draft/ |website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> The Hlaing campus lies slightly north of the main campus and is used for first-year classes.<ref>{{cite web |title=Hlaing Campus {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/hlaing-campus/ |website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=9 March 2026}}</ref> It opened in 1977 as No. 2 Regional College of Rangoon and, in 1981, became the university's Hlaing campus for natural science courses.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Khin La Pyae Woon |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ထဲက အနုပညာရပ်ဝန်းပန်းချီခန်းမ {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/article/10390 |access-date=9 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm |date=1 October 2021}}</ref> From 2000, the campus was used solely as a Basic Education School for Teacher Training until it reopened in 2017.<ref name="VOAH" />
thumb|right|180px|The ''thitpok'' tree on Yangon University's main campus The first building constructed on the main campus was the Convocation Hall, whose foundation stone was laid on 22 December 1922, although the first convocation ceremony had been held at Jubilee Hall in 1921.<ref>{{cite news |title=Yangon University and Colonial Era Buildings |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/en/yangon-university-and-colonial-era-buildings |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews |language=en}}</ref> The hall was officially opened on 28 July 1931 during the 11th convocation ceremony, and subsequent convocation ceremonies have been held there.<ref>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ဘွဲ့နှင်းသဘင်ခန်းမ |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiul-bhainngsbhngkhnm |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar DigitalNews |language=my}}</ref> Near the Convocation Hall stands a large ''thitpok'' (''Tetrameles nudiflora'') tree that has stood there since the university's founding in 1920.<ref name=places>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်၏ အထင်ကရနေရာများ |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiule-athngkrneraamaa |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=my}}</ref> It received the 32nd Blue Plaque from the Yangon Heritage Trust, becoming the first natural heritage site to be so recognised.<ref>{{cite news |title=Over 100 year old Thitpok Tree in University of Yangon marked with YHT’s blue plaque |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/en/over-100-year-old-thitpok-tree-university-yangon-marked-yhts-blue-plaque |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=en}}</ref>
thumb|left|180px|The Judson Tower On the Pyay Road side of the campus stands Judson Church, named after Adoniram Judson, the American missionary credited with bringing Christianity to Burma.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Yan |first1=Paing |title=ဆရာယုဒသန် မြန်မာပြည် ရောက်ရှိခြင်း နှစ် ၂၀၀ ပြည့်အခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပမည် |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2013/11/15/50962.html |work=The Irrawaddy |access-date=10 March 2026 |date=15 November 2013}}</ref> Its cornerstone was laid on 27 July 1931 by Chancellor Sir Charles Alexander Innes, and its bell tower is reached by a 180-step ladder.<ref name=places>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်၏ အထင်ကရနေရာများ |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiule-athngkrneraamaa |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=my}}</ref> Nearby is the two-storey Recreation Centre (RC), which includes a stadium, restaurants, and a room for the university art association. The building combines Burmese and modern architectural styles and was designed in the late 1950s by an American architect in collaboration with Sithu U Tin, with funding from the Asia Foundation.<ref>{{cite news |title=The Recreation Centre of Yangon University {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/moi%3Aeng/index.php/article/2224 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm}}</ref>
To commemorate the university's diamond jubilee, the military government constructed Diamond Jubilee Hall at a cost of 63,000,000 kyat,<ref>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် နှစ်တစ်ရာပြည့်အထိမ်းအမှတ်နှင့် ဆေးတက္ကသိုလ်များ |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiul-ncttcraapnnyathimamttnng-chettkksiulmaa |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=my}}</ref> and the hall later hosted Barack Obama during his visit to Burma.<ref>{{cite news |title=သမ္မတ အိုဘားမားကို မြန်မာ လူငယ်တွေ အားကျ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2014/11/19/67326.html|access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=19 November 2014}}</ref>
By 1928, the university had completed five hostels, named after the historic regions of Ava, Sagaing, Pinya, Bago, and Thaton. Bago Hall is best known as the residence of General Aung San, who lived in room 113 on the third floor, which is now preserved separately as the Aung San Room.<ref>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ပဲခူးဆောင်က အခန်းအမှတ် (၁၁၃) |url=https://www.mdn.gov.mm/my/rnkunttkksiul-paikhuucheaangk-akhnamtt-113 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=MDN - Myanmar Digital News |language=my}}</ref>
The main campus houses two libraries: the Yangon University Library and the Universities' Central Library (UCL).<ref name="L1">{{cite news |title=သမိုင်းဝင်ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် စာကြည့်တိုက်အကြောင်း တစေ့တစောင်း ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် စာကြည့်တိုက် စာကြည့်တိုက်မှူး ဒေါ်သင်းသင်းစိုးနှင့် တွေ့ဆုံမေးမြန်းခြင်း {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/news/7366 |work=www.moi.gov.mm |language=en}}</ref> The foundation stone of the Yangon University Library was laid on 8 December 1927 by Sir Harcourt Butler, and the library officially opened in 1931 at the corner of Chancellor Road and Sagaing Road.<ref name="L1" /> In 1964, the library was transferred to the Department of Higher Education and renamed the Universities' Central Library. In 1973, a new building for the UCL was constructed next to the original building, which regained its original name.<ref name="L2">{{cite news |title=တက္ကသိုလ်များ ဗဟိုစာကြည့်တိုက် |url=https://www.myanmar.gov.mm/my/news-media/news/latest-news/-/asset_publisher/idasset354/content/%25E1%2580%2590%25E1%2580%2580%25E1%2580%25B9%25E1%2580%2580%25E1%2580%259E%25E1%2580%25AD%25E1%2580%25AF%25E1%2580%259C%25E1%2580%25BA%25E1%2580%2599%25E1%2580%25BB%25E1%2580%25AC%25E1%2580%25B8-%25E1%2580%2597%25E1%2580%259F%25E1%2580%25AD%25E1%258?_com_liferay_asset_publisher_web_portlet_AssetPublisherPortlet_INSTANCE_idasset354_redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.myanmar.gov.mm%2Fmy%2Fweb%2Fguest%2Fnews-media%2Fnews%2Flatest-news%3Fp_p_id%3Dcom_liferay_asset_publisher_web_portlet_AssetPublisherPortlet_INSTANCE_idasset354%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26_com_liferay_asset_publisher_web_portlet_AssetPublisherPortlet_INSTANCE_idasset354_cur%3D2383%26_com_liferay_asset_publisher_web_portlet_AssetPublisherPortlet_INSTANCE_idasset354_delta%3D10%26p_r_p_resetCur%3Dfalse%26_com_liferay_asset_publisher_web_portlet_AssetPublisherPortlet_INSTANCE_idasset354_assetEntryId%3D77847973| work=Myanmar National Portal| access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> The three-storey new building was designed by Khin Maung Lwin, a grandson of Sithu U Tin, and construction was completed in 1993.<ref name="L2" />
==Administration and departments== The university is governed by a leadership board comprising the rector; pro-rectors for academic affairs, administrative and financial services, and institutional development at both the main and Hlaing campuses; a pro-rector serving at the Ministry of Education; the heads of engineering, administration, and finance; the registrar; the university librarian; and the heads of academic departments.<ref name=org>{{cite web |title=Organization {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/organization/ |website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> The rector is Tin Maung Tun,<ref>{{cite news |title=တက္ကသိုလ်ပါမောက္ခချုပ်များ၏ ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ်၊ နှစ်သစ်မင်္ဂလာ ဆုတောင်းစကားများ {{!}} Ministry Of Information |url=https://www.moi.gov.mm/news/49860 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=www.moi.gov.mm|language=en}}</ref> and, as of 2025, the university has six pro-rectors.<ref name="org" /> Its affiliated institutions are the National Management Degree College and the Nationalities Youth Resource Development Degree College, Yangon.<ref name="org" />
The university comprises 21 departments{{sfn|Fiori|Proserpio|2021|p=114}} in the disciplines of Myanmar, English, Geography, History, Psychology, Philosophy, Law, Oriental Studies, International Relations and Political Science, Anthropology, Archaeology, Library and Information Studies, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Zoology, Botany, Geology, Computer Studies, Industrial Chemistry, and Environment and Water Studies.<ref name="org" /> Each department admits up to 50 students.<ref name="reopen" /> It also includes the Universities’ Research Centre (URC), established in 1985,<ref>{{cite web |title=URC {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/urc/|website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> and has maintained a University Training Corps (UTC) since 1922.<ref>{{cite news |title=Myanmar Junta Calls on Students to Join University Corps |url=https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-junta-calls-on-students-to-join-university-corps.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy}}</ref>
The university is a member of the ASEAN University Network (AUN),<ref>{{cite web |title=Membership {{!}} Discover AUN {{!}} Asean University Network |url=https://www.aunsec.org/discover-aun/membership |website=AUN |access-date=10 March 2026 |language=en}}</ref> the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA),<ref>{{cite web |title=AUA Members-Asian Universities Alliance |url=http://www.asianuniversities.org/About/AUA_Members.htm |website=www.asianuniversities.org |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> and the Silk-road Universities Network (SUN).<ref>{{cite web |title=Silk-road Universities Network (세계실크로드대학연맹) |url=https://www.sun-silkroadia.org/page/about02 |website=sun-silkroadia.org |access-date=10 March 2026 |language=ko}}</ref>
==Academics== Admission to the University of Yangon is based on performance in the Matriculation Examination and criteria set by the university's own council rather than by the Department of Higher Education.<ref>{{cite news |title=တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်ခွင့် လျှောက်ထားရာမှာ ဘာတွေ ပြောင်းလဲ လာသလဲ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-48728479 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |date=22 June 2019 |language=my}}</ref> Students must hold a High School Completion Certificate, and those admitted to undergraduate programmes begin specialising in their first year. Most first degrees take four years to complete, while law degrees take five.<ref name=adm>{{cite web |title=Admission {{!}} University of Yangon |url=https://www.uy.edu.mm/admission/ |website=www.uy.edu.mm |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> The university is also one of the few universities in Myanmar to offer doctoral study.{{sfn|Fiori|Proserpio|2021|p=114}} In addition to undergraduate education, it offers honours, master's, diploma, and PhD programmes, each with its own academic and admission requirements, as well as separate registration procedures for international students.<ref name="adm" />
The university has also awarded honorary doctorates in literature and law; the first recipient in literature was Ledi Sayadaw.<ref name=phd>{{cite news |title=လယ်တီဆရာတော်ကစတဲ့ ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ် ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင် ပါရဂူများ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-50673371 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref> After independence, the Burmese government awarded honorary doctorates in law to foreign leaders, including King Sihanouk of Cambodia, Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, and David Ben-Gurion of Israel.<ref name="phd" /> The practice ceased in 1962 and resumed in 2003, when such degrees were again conferred on recipients including Sitagu Sayadaw; between 1921 and 2020, a total of 72 people received honorary doctorates from the university.<ref name=Irphd>{{cite news |title=ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင်ဘွဲ့ကြောင့် ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်ဂုဏ်ထိခိုက်ရ ဟုဆို |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2026/02/06/410751.html| work=The Irrawaddy| access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> In February 2026, the university awarded Min Aung Hlaing, the country's military leader since 2021, an honorary doctorate in public administration, prompting public criticism.<ref>{{cite news |title=စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်ကို ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်က ဂုဏ်ထူးဆောင် ပြည်သူ့ရေးရာစီမံခန့်ခွဲမှု ပါရဂူဘွဲ့ပေး |url=https://www.dvb.no/post/744991 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=DVB News |language=en}}</ref>
==Students' union== thumb|right|230px|Last known photo of the Rangoon University Students' Union building The original purpose of the students' union under the University Act 1920 was to enable students to participate in debates and other student activities, modelled on those at Oxford and Cambridge.<ref name=SU>{{cite news |last1=Boe |first1=Maung |title=တက္ကသိုလ်သမဂ္ဂ အဆောက်အအုံရဲ့ ပထမနေ့ရက်များ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/article/2025/07/07/403102.html|access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=7 July 2025}}</ref> The union building was completed on 17 November 1930, and the union itself was formally established on 31 January 1931.<ref name="SU" /> Its first president was Tun Sein and its last was Ba Swe Lay; U Nu, who later became the first prime minister of Burma, also served as president of the union.<ref name="SU" /> The formation of the union has been described as influential in Burma's independence movement, as student members including U Nu and Aung San later joined the nationalist organisation Dobama Asiayone.<ref>{{cite news |title=ကျောင်းသားသမဂ္ဂအကြောင်း လူမသိတဲ့ ၅ ချက် |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/in-depth-44716548|access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref>
After independence, the union became increasingly involved in political activity and came into conflict with Ne Win's government in the lead-up to the 1962 coup. The union building was blown up on the morning after the 7th July Student Uprising.<ref>{{cite news |title=ဇူလိုင် ၇ ရက် ကိုယ်တွေ့ကြုံခဲ့သူ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/media-40537789 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |date=7 July 2017 |language=my}}</ref>
After the political reforms of the 2010s and the reopening of the university, a new students' union was re-established in December 2014 with an initial membership of 17 students.<ref>{{cite news |title=ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ် ကျောင်းသား များသမဂ္ဂဖွဲ့စည်း |url=https://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/yangon-university-students-union-organized-12162014093851.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=RFA Burmese |date=16 December 2014 |language=my}}</ref> In 2017, more than 50 years after the building's destruction, the government led by Aung San Suu Kyi began planning its reconstruction,<ref>{{cite news |title=သမဂ္ဂ အဆောက်အဦး ဖြစ်မြောက်ရေး အကြို ကော်မတီဖွဲ့ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-39056116 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref> but the project was ultimately left unfinished because of disagreements between different generations over the reconstruction plans.<ref name="SU" /><ref>{{cite news |title=ကျောင်းသားသမဂ္ဂ ဆောက်နေမှု ရပ်ဆိုင်း |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-39103921 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}}</ref>
==Notable people== Alumni of the university have played significant roles in the political history of Myanmar. Its graduates include six presidents of the country—Win Maung,<ref>{{cite news |title=Mahn Win Maung, Ex-Burmese President, 73 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/05/obituaries/mahn-win-maung-ex-burmese-president-73.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The New York Times |date=5 July 1989}}</ref> Ne Win,<ref name="BBCYU" /> San Yu,<ref name="BBCYU" /> Maung Maung,<ref name="BBCYU" /> Htin Kyaw<ref>{{cite news |title=Who Is Htin Kyaw, Myanmar's Newly Elected President? |url=https://www.voanews.com/a/brief-bio-of-newly-elected-myanmar-president-htin-kyaw/3237006.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=Voice of America |date=15 March 2016 |language=en}}</ref> and Win Myint<ref>{{cite news |title=ရဲရင့်ခြင်းသင်္ကေတ (သို့) ဒီမိုကရေစီသူရဲကောင်း ပြည်သူ့သမ္မတကြီး ဦးဝင်းမြင့် |url=https://www.dvb.no/post/602337 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=DVB News |language=en}}</ref> —and six prime ministers: U Nu, Ba Swe,<ref>{{cite news |title=Places in History {{!}} Myanmar’s Destroyed Heritage: Rangoon University Student Union |url=https://www.irrawaddy.com/specials/places-in-history/myanmars-destroyed-heritage-rangoon-university-student-union.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=3 July 2020}}</ref> Ne Win, Maung Maung Kha,<ref name="BBCYU" /> Khin Nyunt,<ref>{{cite news |title=‘Hellhound in Robes’: Yangon University Slammed for Honoring Coup-Maker |url=https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/hellhound-in-robes-yangon-university-slammed-for-honoring-coup-maker.html |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=The Irrawaddy}}</ref> and Min Aung Hlaing.<ref>{{cite news |title=Myanmar coup: Min Aung Hlaing, the general who seized power |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55892489 |access-date=10 March 2026 |work=www.bbc.com |date=1 February 2021}}</ref> Among its other notable alumni are Aung San, a leading figure in Burma's independence movement and founder of the country's armed forces; Ba Maw, premier of Burma from 1937 to 1939 and head of state during the Japanese-backed State of Burma (1943–1945);<ref>{{cite web |title=Ba Maw |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095444112 |website=Oxford Reference |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref> and U Thant, who served as the third secretary-general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Selth |first1=Andrew |title=Death of a hero: The U Thant disturbances in Burma, December 1974 |date=2018 |publisher=Griffith Asia Institute |url=https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/483827/AS-death-of-a-hero-U-Thant-disturbance-web-final.pdf |access-date=10 March 2026}}</ref>
<gallery align="center" mode="packed"> File:Ba Maw portrait.jpg|Ba Maw File:Aung San color portrait.jpg|Aung San File:Staatsgreep in Birma, premier U nu, Bestanddeelnr 913-5820 (cropped).jpg|U Nu File:U Thant (1963).jpg|U Thant File:Myanmar President Win Myint.png|Win Myint </gallery>
== See also == * {{portal-inline|Myanmar}}
==References== ===Citations=== {{Reflist}}
===Bibliography=== *{{cite book |last1=Fiori |first1=Antonio |last2=Proserpio |first2=Licia |title=Navigating the evolution of Myanmar higher education: Perspectives from the inside |date=2021 |publisher=CHINLONE |isbn=979-12-200-9864-9 |url=https://site.unibo.it/chinlone/it/results/ebook/ebook-final.pdf |access-date=10 March 2026}} *{{cite book |last=James |first=Helen |title=Governance and civil society in Myanmar: Education, health, and environment |year=2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-35558-3 }} *{{cite book |author=Khin Maung Kyi |title=Economic development of Burma: a vision and a strategy |year=2000 |publisher=Singapore University Press |isbn=91-88836-16-9 |url=https://www.burmalibrary.org/docs12/Vision-strategy-full.pdf-red.pdf |access-date=10 March 2026 }}
== External links == {{Commons category|University of Yangon}} * {{Official website|http://uy.edu.mm/}}
* [https://www.facebook.com/uyinterimcouncil University Facebook Page]
{{ASEAN University Network}} {{Asian Universities Alliance}} {{Universities in Myanmar|state=collapsed}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yangon, University Of}} Category:Universities and colleges established in 1878 Category:Universities and colleges in Yangon Category:Arts and Science universities in Myanmar Category:ASEAN University Network Category:1878 establishments in Burma