A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. University is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs.
The first universities were developed in Europe from schools that had been maintained by the Church for the purpose of educating priests.
The following properties were common among the oldest universities:
They used the word (which was coined at its foundation). They received students from everywhere (not merely the local district or region). They engaged in higher learning that went beyond teaching the Seven Liberal Arts, and had at least one of the higher faculties (Theology, Law or Medicine). They awarded degrees through an oral and public event managed by a guild of masters. They had some degree of autonomy from ecclesiastical authorities. They enjoyed academic freedom. They issued secular as well as non-secular degrees. Top Universities World University Rankings Retrieved 6 January 2010Hunt Janin: "The university in medieval life, 1179–1499", McFarland, 2008, , p. 55f.de Ridder-Symoens, Hilde: A History of the University in Europe: Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages , Cambridge University Press, 1992, , pp. 47–55
The oldest universities with the former criteria were University of Bologna, University of Paris, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and University of Palencia.
History
Definition The original Latin word refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc". As urban town life and medieval guilds developed, specialized associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights (these rights were usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or their towns) became denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.
In modern usage, the word has come to mean "an institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees". The earlier emphasis on its corporate organization is no longer the primary feature by which a modern university is recognized. Compare
The original Latin word referred to degree-awarding institutions of learning in Western and Central Europe, where this form of legal organisation was prevalent and from where the institution spread around the world.
Academic freedom An important idea in the definition of a university is the notion of academic freedom. The first documentary evidence of this comes from early in the life of the University of Bologna, which adopted an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita,Malagola, C. (1888), Statuti delle Università e dei Collegi dello Studio Bolognese. Bologna: Zanichelli. in 1155 or 1158, which guaranteed the right of a traveling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. Today, this is claimed as the origin of "academic freedom".Watson, P. (2005), Ideas. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, page 373 On 18 September 1988, 430 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, marking the 900th anniversary of Bologna's foundation. There is debate over the extent to which academic freedom at publicly funded universities is subject to accountability for the use of public resources; i.e., whether academics' research and teaching should support public goods such as social justice or whether there is also a prerogative to pursue knowledge for its own sake.
Antecedents
The School of Alexandria was established during the 2nd century A.D. Apart from subjects like theology, Christian philosophy and the Bible; science, mathematics and Greek and Roman literature, logic and the arts were also taught. The question-and-answer method of commentary began there, and blind students at the school were using wood-carving techniques to read and write. The first figures of the Church in Egypt were scholars rather than bishops, directors of the Catechetical School of Alexandria: Clement (160–215) and Origen (185–251). "The School of Alexandria - Part I - An Introduction to the School of Alexandria". www.copticchurch.net. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
In 425 CE, Roman emperor Theodosius II founded the Pandidakterion, later known as the University of Constantinople."The Formation of the Hellenic Christian Mind" by Demetrios Constantelos, : "The fifth century marked a definite turning point in Byzantine higher education. Theodosios ΙΙ founded in 425 a major university with 31 chairs for law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric and other subjects. Fifteen chairs were assigned to Latin and 16 to Greek. The university was reorganized by Michael III (842–867) and flourished down to the fourteenth century". The institution taught more than law and philosophy, including geography, music, astronomy, rhetoric, grammar and oratory. Notable teachers included Michael Psellos, John Xiphilinos, John Italos, Eustratius of Nicaea, Michael of Ephesus and John Mauropous, among others.
Nalanda mahavihara was established by emperor Kumaragupta I of the Gupta Empire around 427 CE, became a major Buddhist learning hub, attracting scholars like Xuanzang. It was destroyed in 1202 CE by Bakhtiyar Khilji. The characterization of Nalanda as a "university" in the modern sense has been challenged by scholars. They argue that while it was undoubtedly a major center of learning, comparing it directly to a modern university is historically imprecise.
During and after the mission of St Augustine to England, cathedral schools were established as the new dioceses were themselves created (Canterbury 597, Rochester 604, York 627, for example). Cathedral schools arose in major cities such as Chartres, Orleans, Paris, Laon, Reims or Rouen in France and Utrecht, Liege, Cologne, Metz, Speyer, Würzburg, Bamberg, Magdeburg, Hildesheim or Freising in Germany. Speyer was renowned for supplying the Holy Roman Empire with diplomats.Geschichte der Stadt Speyer. Vol 1, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, The court of Henry I of England, was tied to the cathedral school of Laon.C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (Yale English Monarchs), 2001 p. 25.
Centers of learning were found in seventh-century Spain, both at major monasteries and at episcopal centers. Students at the monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian, at Agali near Toledo, learned such scientific subjects as medicine and the rudiments of astronomy. In the heyday of the monastic schools in the 9th and 10th centuries, the teachings of important scholars such as Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, Heiric of Auxerre and Notker Balbulus raised the prestige of their abbeys and attracted pupils from afar to attend their courses.
An early institution is the Madrasa of Harran, founded in the late 8th century. Scholars occasionally call the University of al-Qarawiyyin (name given in 1963), founded as a mosque by Fatima al-Fihri in 859 CE, a university,Verger, Jacques: "Patterns", in: Ridder-Symoens, Hilde de (ed.): A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 2003, , pp. 35–76 (35)Joseph, S, and Najmabadi, A. Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures: Economics, education, mobility, and space. Brill, 2003, p. 314.Swartley, Keith. Encountering the World of Islam. Authentic, 2005, p. 74. although writes that this is done out of scholarly convenience.A History of the University in Europe. Vol. I: Universities in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 2003, 35 Several scholars consider that al-Qarawiyyin was foundedPetersen, Andrew: Dictionary of Islamic Architecture, Routledge, 1996, , p. 87 (entry "Fez"): Lulat, Y. G.-M.: A History Of African Higher Education From Antiquity To The Present: A Critical Synthesis Studies in Higher Education, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, , p. 70: and runBelhachmi, Zakia: "Gender, Education, and Feminist Knowledge in al-Maghrib (North Africa) – 1950–70", Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies, Vol. 2–3, 2003, pp. 55–82 (65): "The Adjustments of Original Institutions of the Higher Learning: the Madrasah. Significantly, the institutional adjustments of the madrasahs affected both the structure and the content of these institutions. In terms of structure, the adjustments were twofold: the reorganization of the available original madaris and the creation of new institutions. This resulted in two different types of Islamic teaching institutions in al-Maghrib. The first type was derived from the fusion of old madaris with new universities. For example, Morocco transformed Al-Qarawiyin (859 A.D.) into a university under the supervision of the ministry of education in 1963."Shillington, Kevin: Encyclopedia of African History, Vol. 2, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2005, , p. 1025: They consider institutions like al-Qarawiyyin to be higher education colleges of Islamic law where other subjects were only of secondary importance.Pedersen, J.; Rahman, Munibur; Hillenbrand, R.: "Madrasa", in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, Brill, 2010: Meri, Josef W. (ed.): Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, A–K, Routledge, , p. 457 (entry "madrasa"): Makdisi, George: "Madrasa and University in the Middle Ages", Studia Islamica, No. 32 (1970), pp. 255–264 (255f.): as a madrasa until after World War II. They date the transformation of the madrasa of al-Qarawiyyin into a university to its modern reorganization in 1963.Lulat, Y. G.-M.: A History Of African Higher Education From Antiquity To The Present: A Critical Synthesis, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005, , pp. 154–157Park, Thomas K.; Boum, Aomar: Historical Dictionary of Morocco, 2nd ed., Scarecrow Press, 2006, , p. 348 In the wake of these reforms, al-Qarawiyyin was officially renamed "University of Al Quaraouiyine" two years later.
Some scholars, including George Makdisi, have argued that early medieval universities were influenced by the madrasas in Al-Andalus, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Middle East during the Crusades.; Norman Daniel, however, views this argument as overstated. Universities and madrasas differed in several major respects. In 2013, Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara claimed that the influences of scholarship from the Islamic world on the universities of Western Europe requires a reconsideration of the development of higher education, turning away from a concern with local institutional structures to a broader consideration within a global context.
Medieval Europe
Although there are antecedents, the modern university is generally regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian tradition.Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, , pp. XIX–XXVerger, Jacques. "The Universities and Scholasticism," in The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume V c. 1198–c. 1300. Cambridge University Press, 2007, 257. European higher education took place for hundreds of years in cathedral schools and monastic schools (), in which monks and nuns taught classes; evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the 6th century.Riché, Pierre (1978): "Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: From the Sixth through the Eighth Century", Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, , pp. 126-7, 282-98 In Europe, young men proceeded to university when they had completed their study of the trivium – the preparatory arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic or logic–and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.