Duke University is a private research university founded in 1838 and renamed under its current title in 1924. Based in Durham, North Carolina, it employs 48,313 people across the state, among them 4,236 faculty members, making it one of the largest employers in the region. Its operations span education, scientific research and patient care, and it maintains partnerships with organisations worldwide.
The university runs 10 schools and colleges, including Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, the Pratt School of Engineering, the School of Medicine and the Fuqua School of Business, which together enrol 17,499 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. Duke Health, its academic medical centre, provides healthcare alongside its teaching and research functions. Work is organised across a range of disciplines: higher education and academic research, medicine and healthcare, global health, energy, environment and sustainability, brain sciences, and engineering.
Interdisciplinary institutes - the Duke Global Health Institute, the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences - bring together staff from different fields on shared problems. The institution reports a four-year graduation rate of 91%, an employment rate of 95% among graduates, and 16 Nobel laureates among its students and faculty.
