Creating Your First University Campus in Cities: Skylines

A university campus is one of the three custom campuses that you can build in the Cities: Skylines Campus expansion. The other two are the liberal arts college and trade school.

The university campus is unlocked at the Capital City milestone, which can be between 8,000 and 36,000 citizens, depending on the map. Do not confuse this for the ploppable university building that you can build in the base game for ₡75,000 starting at the Big Town milestone.

(However, both university campuses and universities provide the “Highly Educated” education level to its graduates.)

We’ll take you through the basics of creating and maintaining your first university, which involves three things:

Creating a university campus area
The different building types
Increasing your campus reputation

Creating a University Campus Area

Every campus area starts with its respective administration building.

You’ll find the University Administration Building by going to the education build menu, and clicking the University Campus tab.

You’ll find the University Administration Building by going to the education menu (1) and clicking on the University Campus Area tab (2).

Placing this down automatically designates the small area underneath it as a university campus area.

Expand this by going to Districts and Areas and then selecting the Paint Campus Area tool.

The Paint Campus Area tool lets you create and expand your campus areas.

Alternatively, you can start off by painting the campus area first, then plopping the administration building inside it.

Although this already counts as a university campus, the administration office by itself has no student capacity. For that you’ll need to proceed to the next step: adding the different buildings.

University Campus Area Buildings

Apart from the administration building, each campus area comes with three types of buildings.

You unlock buildings as your campus reputation (level) increases.

Only the administration building requires access to your road network; the rest of the university buildings only require pedestrian paths connecting them to the admin building (but you can build them next to roads as well if you like).

Education Buildings

These increase student capacity. You can have multiple instances of these in your campus.

SCROLL

Building	Level Unlocked	Cost (₡)	Student Capacity	Notes
University Dormitory	Unrecognized	17,000	300
University Study Hall	Unrecognized	22,000	400
University Gymnasium	Recognized	35,000	300	City-wide effect on citizen health
University Auditorium	Acclaimed	35,000	600
University Laboratories	Acclaimed	53,000	560	Boosts Academic Works creation

A university gymnasium (left) and two university dormitories facing each other (right)

Faculties

These increase student capacity greatly, and confer unique bonuses to your city. You can only build one of each.

SCROLL

Building	Level Unlocked	Cost	Student Capacity	Notes
School of Law	Unrecognized	133,000	1,000	Reduces city-wide Police Department upkeep Reduces city-wide crime rate
School of Medicine	Renowned	150,000	1,000	Boosts healthcare efficiency Increases hospital and clinic patient capacity Increases the number of available ambulances
School of Science	Prestigious	165,000	1,000	Increases income from all specialized industries Reduces city-wide electricity consumption and pollution

The School of Law is one of the unique faculties you can build in your university campus.

Supplementary Buildings

Some of these increase student capacity by a small amount and others don’t. Most increase land value.

SCROLL

Building	Level Unlocked	Cost	Student Capacity	Notes
University Groundskeeping	Unrecognized	8,500	0	Increases land value
Futsal Club	Unrecognized	21,000	50
University Outdoor Study	Recognized	13,000	200
University Cafeteria	Recognized	21,000	0	Increases land value
University Fountain	Recognized	17,000	0	Increases land value
University Library	Renowned	35,000	100	Increases land value
Math Club	Renowned	26,500	50
University Commencement Office	Renowned	44,000	0	Has a graduation ceremony animation
University Academic Statue 1	Renowned	22,000	0
University Bookstore	Acclaimed	21,000	0	Increases Tourism attractiveness Increases land value
University Media Lab	Prestigious	62,000	200	Boosts Academic Works creation
Chess Club	Prestigious	35,000	50
University Academic Statue 2	Prestigious	26,500	0	Increases land value

Increasing Your University Campus Reputation

To unlock buildings, you’ll need to raise your campus reputation (in other words, level up). There are five different reputation levels:

Level 1 – Unrecognized
Level 2 – Recognized
Level 3 – Renowned
Level 4 – Acclaimed
Level 5 – Prestigious

Leveling up requires you to hit three types of milestones:

Students enrolled: You’ll need to make sure you have enough population, as well as the student capacity.

Campus attractiveness: This simply involves building more campus buildings (all of which increase attractiveness). You may need to build several instances of some buildings to reach the milestones.

Academic works: Every academic year, a campus has a base chance of 30% to produce 1 academic work per 500 students. You can encourage more academic work production by hiring academic staff, and building the University Laboratories and University Media Lab.

Each academic year you can also spend 50,000 for a research grant, which produces 1 academic work. For university campuses, academic works come in three categories: dissertation, discovery, and scientific study.

Note: Reputation increases are not granted as soon as you hit all three milestones, but rather at the end of each academic year (which runs on a 40-week cycle).

Clicking the name of your university on the map brings up information such as your progress towards the next reputation level.

Click the Academic Works tab to hire academic staff (increases your chances of producing more academic works per year) or give research grants (produces 1 additional academic work for that year).

BACK TO THE MAIN GAME Cities: Skylines Full Strategy Guide

Guide Navigation

Cities: Skylines
- Creating Your First University Campus in Cities: Skylines

Liz Villegas

174 articles

Liz is a writer and photographer with a love for building and strategy games. Her spare time is often split between lifting, reading, drawing, annoying her dog Mr. Porky Butt, and squinting at stat tables on the wiki pages of whatever game she's currently playing.

View Writer's Posts →