From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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
Arguably the first western university was the Academy founded in 387 BC by the
Greek philosopher Plato in the grove of Academos
near Athens,
where students were taught philosophy, mathematics and gymnastics.
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
universities were established in Bologna (Italy) and Paris (France) in the Middle
Ages for the study of law, medicine, and theology.
Well before, similar institutions already existed in Persia and the Islamic world,
notably the Academy of
Gundishapur and later also Al Azhar university in Cairo, which remains
the oldest operating university in the world. One of the most important Asian universities, next
to the Persian
Academy of
Gundishapur, was Nalanda, in Bihar,
India, where the second century Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna was
based.
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, §1 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 recognised bodies can award degrees of any
kind.
In France,
students can also attend Grandes écoles, which are
very prestigious and elitist schools, with small promotions—usually a couple
hundred students—and very selective competitive exams at the entrance. 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.
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 American federal government does not
directly organize or regulate universities, informal systems of accreditation have been
developed by regional networks of academic institutions. The vast majority of
private and public American universities are non-profit (meaning that excess
tuition is plowed into providing higher quality of service), but starting in the
1970s, many for-profit colleges and universities were founded to take advantage
of certain changes in the federal student assistance programs.
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.
Colloquial usage
Colloquially, the term university is used around the world
for a phase in one's life:"when I was at university…"; the American equivalent
is college:"when I was in college…". See college, §3, for further
discussion.
See also
Related terms
- academia - academy - admission
- alumnus -
aula
- Bologna process - business schools - Grandes écoles - campus - college - college
and university rankings - dean - degree - diploma - discipline
- dissertation (http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Dissertation) -
faculty - fraternities
and sororities - graduate student - graduation
- mega university - perpetual student -
Privatdozent - professor -
provost - rector - research - scholar - senioritis
- student -
tenure - tuition - universal access
External links
