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A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas, meaning corporation (since the first medieval European universities were simply groups of scholars).
History
Because of the above definition, the oldest universities in the world were all European, as the awarding of academic degrees was not a custom of older institutions of learning in Asia and Africa. However, institutions of higher learning considerably older than the most ancient European universities existed in countries such as China, Egypt and India.
The Academy, founded in 387 BC by the Greek philosopher Plato in the grove of Academos near Athens, taught its students philosophy, mathematics, and gymnastics, and is sometimes considered a forerunner of modern European universities. Other Greek cities with notable educational institutions include Kos (the home of Hippocrates), which had a medical school, and Rhodes, which had philosophical schools. Another famous classical university was the Museum and Library of Alexandria.
About a thousand years after Plato, institutions bearing a resemblance to the modern university existed in Persia and the Islamic world, notably the Academy of Gundishapur and later also al-Azhar University in Cairo.
In Asia, there were a number of institutions of higher learning that vaguely resembled universities in the Western sense of the word. In general, these are of considerble antiquity, predating western institutions of higher learning by centuries. Some of the most important Asian institutions, next to the Persian Academy of Gundishapur, were to be found in India. The ancient cities of Nalanda, Vikramasila, Kanchipura and Takshasila were greatly reputed centres of learning in the east, with students from all over Asia. In particular, Nalanda was a famous center of Buddhist scholarship, and as such it attracted a vast number of Buddhist scholars from China, central Asia and Southeast Asia.
In the Carolingian period, a famous academy was created by Charlemagne for the purpose of educating the children of aristocrats to help train the professionals needed to run an empire. It was a foreshadow of the rise of the University in the 11th century.
The first European medieval university was the University of Magnaura in Constantinople, founded in 849 by the emperor Bardas, followed by the University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy, and the University of Paris in Paris, France. Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools. Many historians state that the universities and cathedral schools are part of the continuation of the interest in learning kept up by the monks in their monasteries during the dark age.
In Europe, young men proceeded to the university when they had completed the study of the trivium–the preparatory arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic–and the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. (See degrees of Oxford University for the history of how the trivium and quadrivium developed in relation to degrees, especially in anglophone universities).
Universities are generally established by statute or charter. In the United Kingdom, for instance, a university is instituted by Act of Parliament or Royal Charter; in either case generally with the approval of Privy Council, and only such recognized bodies can award degrees of any kind.
France
In France, students can also attend grandes écoles, which are very prestigious and elite schools, with small student bodies—usually a couple hundred students—and very selective and competitive entrance exams. There are grandes écoles for literature, business, and engineering. Formation provided in these schools is usually of a better level than the corresponding one in French universities. The system of the grandes écoles is particular to the French education system.
United States
In the United States, universities are usually treated by the law as a corporation like any other, although many states impose special responsibilities to safeguard the welfare of a university's students. Because the U.S. federal government does not directly organize or regulate universities, unofficial but formalized systems of accreditation have been developed by regional networks of academic institutions.
In the late 19th century, the U.S. Congress encouraged the creation of many land-grant universities. In the last decades of the 20th century, a number of "mega-universities" have been created, teaching with distance learning techniques.
The vast majority of American private and public universities are non-profit (meaning that excess tuition is put into providing more and better services), but starting in the 1970s, many for-profit colleges and universities were founded to take advantage of changes in the federal student assistance programs.
Selective admissions
Unlike community colleges, enrollment at a university is generally not available to all. However, admission systems vary widely around the world.
In English-speaking countries, prospective university students typically apply for admission through a selective (and frequently arduous) process during their last year of high school or community college. Universities have formed non-profit organizations (or arranged for the formation of government agencies) to centralize the administration of standardized admission exams and the processing of applications.
Such organizations include:
See also: college admissions
In contrast, admission is administered differently elsewhere. For example, in Germany, prospective students who have passed the Abitur may decide freely what subjects to enroll in. However, in some popular subject fields such as medicine or business administration, students have to pass a certain numerus clausus — that is, they cannot enroll unless they have scored a minimum grade point average on their Abitur. Austria and Switzerland probably have the most liberal system of university admission anywhere in the world, since anyone who has passed the Matura may enroll in any subject field (or even several at no additional cost) at a public university. In Belgium as well, the only prerequisite for enrolling in university studies is to have obtained a high-school diploma. In both Switzerland and Belgium, the medical studies are an exception, which have a numerus clausus system due to overcrowding. This liberal admission practice led to overcrowding and high dropout rates in the more popular fields of study like psychology and journalism, as well as high failure rates on exams which are unofficially used to filter out the less-capable students. Following a ruling by the European Court of Justice issued on July 7, 2005, which forces Austria to accept nationals of other EU Member States under the same conditions as students who took their Matura in Austria, a law was passed on June 8 allowing universities to impose measures to select students in those fields which are subject to numerus clausus in Germany. At present, it is not completely clear what exactly those restrictions will be, but there are no intentions to introduce a numerus clausus.
Colloquial usage
Colloquially, the term university is used around the world for a phase in one's life: "when I was at university…"; in the United States, college is often used: "when I was in college…". See college, §3, for further discussion.
The usual practice in the United States today is to call an institution made up of several faculties and granting a range of higher degrees a "university" while a smaller institution only granting bachelor's or associate's degrees is called a "college". (See liberal arts colleges, community college). Nevertheless, a few of America's oldest and most prestigious universities, such as Boston College, Dartmouth College and the College of William and Mary, have retained the term "college" in their names for historical reasons though they offer a wide range of higher degrees.
See also
Related terms
- academia - academic rank - academy - admission - alumnus - aula - Bologna process - business schools - Grandes écoles - campus - college - college and university rankings - dean - degree - diploma - discipline - dissertation - faculty - fraternities and sororities - graduate student - graduation - lecturer - medieval university - mega university - perpetual student - professor - provost - rector - research - scholar - senioritis - student - tenure - tuition - undergraduate - universal access - university administration
References
- Walter Ruegg (ed), A History of the University in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (3 vols) ISBN 0521361079 (vol 3 reviewed by Laurence Brockliss in the Times Literary Supplement, no 5332, 10 June 2005, pages 3-4).
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