Like Liege, the city of Ghent owes its university to the educational policy of king William I during the period of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830). This contribution seeks to explain why the king opted for three new state universities in the South (Louvain, Liege and Ghent) and decided on Ghent instead of the small, catholic city of Bruges. The king's modern and centralist ambitions regarding higher education in the United Kingdom were thwarted by the Belgian revolution of 1830. The survival of the state universities of Ghent and Liege in 1835 was, to a large extent, due to the foundation of two free universities in Mechelen and Brussels in the previous year. Evidently, Belgium's politics of compromise in the field of higher education has a long history, with ideological differences presenting a major source of tension and conflict. The main theme of this article is the way in which the city of Ghent championed its university during a turbulent time of regime changes.