Definition
“A number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc.” is the general meaning of the ancient Latin word universitas. Specialized groups of students and teachers with collective legal rights (typically secured by charters given by princes, prelates, or their cities) were known by this general name as urban town life and medieval guilds grew. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and established the criteria of their members.
University: Higher education establishment, typically consisting of graduate and professional schools, a college of liberal arts and sciences, and the power to award degrees in a range of subject areas. A university is not the same as a college since it is often bigger, offers a wider range of courses, and awards professional and graduate degrees (master’s and doctorates) in addition to undergraduate degrees (such a bachelor’s). Universities existed in various countries of Asia and Africa in antiquity, even though they did not emerge in the West until the Middle Ages in Europe.
Early universities
The Studiena generalia, which were widely acknowledged educational institutions welcoming students from all over Europe, were the ancestors of the contemporary Western university. Attempts to educate clerks and monks at a level above that of the cathedral and monastic schools gave rise to the first studia. The main distinction between the studia and the schools from whence they originated was the presence of scholars from other nations.
In the Medieval Civic Museum in Bologna, Italy, there is a tombstone of Giovanni d’Andrea that features a relief representing him as a canon law professor giving a lecture to students at the University of Bologna in 1348.
A renowned medical school that attracted students from all across Europe emerged at Salerno, Italy, in the ninth century and is regarded as the first university in Western history. But it was still just a medical school. Late in the 11th century, in Bologna, the first authentic university was established in the West. It developed into a canon and civil law school that was highly regarded. The institution of Paris was established between 1150 and 1170, making it the earliest institution in northern Europe. It gained notoriety for teaching theology, and by the end of the 12th century, other northern European universities, including the University of Oxford in England, were modeling themselves after it. The Colleges of Paris and Oxford were composed of colleges, which were actually endowed residence halls for scholars.
These early universities were corporations of students and masters, and they eventually received their charters from popes, emperors, and kings.
The first universities were formed by imperial authority—the University of Naples, founded by Emperor Frederick II in 1224—and by papal decree—the University of Toulouse, founded by Pope Gregory IX in 1229. As long as these institutions didn’t teach heresy or atheism, they were allowed to run their own affairs. Together, masters and students choose their own rectors, or presidents. But universities have to pay for themselves as a cost of independence. Teachers had to satisfy their students in order to earn a living, thus they collected fees. These early universities were vulnerable to the departure of disgruntled students and instructors who may move to another city and found another place to study because they lacked corporate property and permanent facilities.
University of Glasgow, Scotland
Universities were founded in many of Europe’s major cities starting in the 13th century. During the beginning of the 13th century, universities were established in Montpellier (France) and Aix-en-Provence (France); in Italy, at Padua (1222), Rome (1303), and Florence (1321); in Spain, at Salamanca (1218); in central Europe, at Prague (1348) and Vienna (1365); in Germany, at Heidelberg (1386), Leipzig (1409), Freiburg (1457), and Tübingen (1477); in Belgium, at Louvain (1425); in the modern nation of Belgium; and in Scotland, at Saint Andrews (1411) and Glasgow (1451).
The majority of Western institutions provided a basic curriculum centered on the seven liberal arts—grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music—up until the end of the 18th century. After that, students continued their studies with a professional faculty member.
Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation’s effects on higher education in Europe
Europe’s universities were impacted differently by the 16th-century Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation that followed. While many Roman Catholic universities became ardent champions of the traditional learning connected with the Catholic church, new Protestant universities were formed and existing schools were taken over by Protestants in the German states.
By the 17th century, both Protestant and Catholic universities had become overly devoted to defending correct religious doctrines and hence remained resistant to the new interest in science that had begun to sweep through Europe. The new learning was discouraged, and thus many universities underwent a period of relative decline. New schools continued to be founded during this time, however, including ones at Edinburgh (1583), Leiden (1575), and Strasbourg (university status, 1621).
Founded by Lutherans in 1694, Halle was the first modern university in Europe. This institution was among the first to reject any form of religious orthodoxy in favor of logical and impartial intellectual investigation. Additionally, it was the first to have lectures given by professors in German, a vernacular language, as opposed to Latin. A decade later, in 1737, the University of Göttingen embraced Halle’s innovations, which were later copied by most German and several American universities.
In the later 18th and 19th centuries religion was gradually displaced as the dominant force as European universities became institutions of modern learning and research and were secularized in their curriculum and administration. These trends were typified by the University of Berlin (1809), in which laboratory experimentation replaced conjecture; theological, philosophical, and other traditional doctrines were examined with a new rigour and objectivity; and modern standards of academic freedom were pioneered. The German model of the university as a complex of graduate schools performing advanced research and experimentation proved to have a worldwide influence.
First universities in the Western Hemisphere
Spanish settlers founded the first universities in the Western Hemisphere, the University of Michoacán (1539) in Mexico and the University of Santo Domingo (1538) in what is now the Dominican Republic. The four-year colleges at Harvard (1636), William and Mary (1693), Yale (1701), Princeton (1746), and King’s College (1754; now Columbia) were the first American educational establishments. Religious organizations founded the majority of the country’s early colleges, most of which went on to become accredited universities. Founded as King’s College in 1827, the University of Toronto is among the oldest in Canada.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Hundreds of new universities were established as the US border shifted westward. American universities and colleges have a tendency to follow German models in an attempt to blend the native tradition of educational opportunity for everyone with the Prussian ideal of academic independence. The Morrill Act of 1862, which gave each state parcels of land to finance new agricultural and mechanical schools, significantly aided in the expansion of such institutions in the United States. This act gave rise to numerous “land-grant colleges,” among them the state universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Cornell University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
19TH-CENTURY MODERNIZATION, SECULARIZATION, AND REORGANIZATION
During the 19th century, colleges in several European nations underwent restructuring and secularization, including France (1896), Italy (1870), and Spain (1876). Universities in these and other European nations started to be primarily funded by the government. The second part of the 1800s saw the admission of women to universities. In the meantime, curricula at universities kept changing. The traditional study of Latin, Greek, and theology was supplemented—and in many cases completely replaced—by the study of contemporary languages and literatures. A acknowledged place in curricula was attained by sciences like engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and even economics. By the turn of the 20th century, emerging subjects including political science, psychology, sociology, and economics were also taught.
Many of Great Britain’s and France’s colonies in South and Southeast Asia and Africa had colleges built in the late 19th and early 20th century. The majority of the independent nations that arose from these colonies in the middle of the 20th century developed their university systems in accordance with the models of the United States or Europe, frequently with significant financial and technical support from industrialized nations, former colonial powers, and international organizations like the World Bank. Universities in China, Russia, and Japan also changed in response to modernization demands. Certain pre-independence Indian universities, including Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva-Bharati (1921) and Banaras Hindu University (1916), were established as alternatives to Western-style education. The state universities of St. Petersburg (1819) and Moscow (1755) continued to be the leaders in Russia. Tokyo (1877) and Kyōto (1897) universities were the most prestigious ones in Japan, as was Peking University (1898) in China.
MODERN UNIVERSITIES
State, federal, or local governments may provide funding for modern colleges, or they may primarily rely on student tuition payments. A modern residential university can educate undergraduates and graduate students in the whole spectrum of the arts and humanities, mathematics, social sciences, physical, biological, and earth sciences, as well as different sectors of technology. Typically, these institutions can accommodate 30,000 students or more. Nonresidential, virtual, and open universities, some of which are modeled after Britain’s Open University (1969), may enroll 200,000 or more students, who pursue both degree-credit and noncredit courses of study. In most professional sectors, graduate-level instruction is primarily offered by universities.
And finally, there is still a small, friendly debate about who was actually “first” even within European colleges. Although it was founded by students, the University of Bologna was established before the University of Paris, which was founded by faculty members who then approached potential students. It’s still up for debate among some (particularly in Paris) as to which was the first “genuine” university, although most agree that Bologna University came first.
