The University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) is an American public research university located in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada.

The campus is located approximately east of the Las Vegas Strip.

The university includes the Shadow Lane Campus, located just east of the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, which houses the School of Dental Medicine— the only dental school in the state of Nevada.

In addition, UNLV's law school, the William S.

Boyd School of Law, is also the only law school in the state.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) is an independent, non-profit membership organization recognized by the United States Department of Education since 1952 as the regional authority on educational quality and institutional effectiveness of higher education institutions in the seven-state Northwest region of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

It fulfills its mission by establishing accreditation criteria and evaluation procedures by which institutions are reviewed.

The commission dropped its association with the Council for Higher Education Accreditation and as of May 2012, is not listed in CHEA's database of recognized accrediting agencies; it is shown as one that was formerly recognized.

The agency is still the regional accrediting agency for the Pacific Northwest states, as CHEA recognition is not required in order for accrediting agencies to be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

A research university is a university that expects all its tenured and tenure-track faculty to continuously engage in research, as opposed to merely requiring it as a condition of an initial appointment or tenure.

Such universities can be recognized by their strong focus on innovative research and the prestige of their brand names.

On the one hand, research universities strive to recruit faculty who are the most brilliant minds in their disciplines in the world, and their students enjoy the opportunity to learn from such experts.

On the other hand, new students are often disappointed to realize their undergraduate courses at research universities are overly academic and fail to provide vocational training with immediate "real world" applications; but many employers value degrees from research universities because they know that such coursework develops fundamental skills like critical thinking.

Undergraduate education is the post-secondary education previous to the postgraduate education.

It includes all the academic programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree.

For example, in the United States an entry level university student is known as an undergraduate, while students of higher degrees are known as graduates.

In some other educational systems and subjects, undergraduate education is post-secondary education up to the level of a master's degree; this is the case for some science courses in Britain and some medicine courses in Europe.

Postgraduate education, or graduate education in North America, involves learning and studying for academic or professional degrees, academic or professional certificates, academic or professional diplomas, or other qualifications for which a first or bachelor's degree generally is required, and it is normally considered to be part of higher education.

In North America, this level is generally referred to as graduate school (or sometimes colloquially as grad school).