Northern Kentucky University (NKU) is a public, co-educational university located in Highland Heights, Kentucky, United States, seven miles (11 km) southeast of Cincinnati, Ohio. NKU is primarily an undergraduate, liberal arts institution, but it also features graduate programs. Total enrollment at the university currently exceeds 15,000 students, with over 13,000 undergraduate students and over 2,000 graduate students. NKU is the third largest university in Greater Cincinnati and the youngest of Kentucky's eight state universities, although it is not the last to join the state system, as the University of Louisville did not become a state university until 1970. NKU ranked at 517 of 600 universities on Forbes Magazine's 2009 "America's Best Colleges" ranking.