The University of Dayton is a private Catholic university operated by the Society of Mary located in Dayton, Ohio. The full-time undergraduate student enrollment around 7,500. Total student enrollment is approximately 11,000.

The University of Dayton is one of the ten largest Catholic schools in the United States and is the largest of the three Marianist universities in the nation. It is also home to one of the largest campus ministry programs in the world. The university offers more than 70 academic programs in arts and sciences, business administration, education and allied professions, engineering and law. It was first in the country to offer an undergraduate degree program in human rights.

In 2006 the University of Dayton's entrepreneurship program was named to the top 5 in the nation according to the Princeton Review and was in the top 10 of Entrepreneur magazine's "Top 100 Entrepreneurial Colleges for 2005". To complement the entrepreneurship program a student run organization called Flyer Enterprises was created in 2000. The university's law school is noted for its Program in Law and Technology, which emphasizes intellectual property law (patent, trademark, and copyright). UD was also recognized in 2006 as the third best university in the country in positive contribution the institution has made to the welfare of its surrounding community, and ranked number one in international student satisfaction compared with other universities both in the United States and overseas, according to the International Student Barometer, the largest survey of international student satisfaction in the world .