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University

From Tilcayo Cats, the lean encyclopaedia by Tilcayo Knowledge Systems
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A university is an institution of higher learning that teaches students and awards degrees. The European university dates from the 12th century or earlier, and the historian Robert Anderson describes universities as, apart from the church and the monarchy, the oldest and most international of British institutions.[1]

Origins

The traditional foundation date for the University of Bologna is 1088, and Paris followed soon after.[1] The two offered different models of authority. Bologna was a "university of students", while Paris was a "university of masters". The election of the rector by students at the older Scottish universities is a relic of the Bologna model.[1] Across Europe, teaching and degrees rested on four faculties: arts, theology, medicine and law.[1]

The word universitas originally meant a community. Colleges came comparatively late, borrowed from Paris, and early students lived in lodgings in the town or in halls and hostels.[2]

Teaching and students

The central subject of the medieval university was logic, based on Aristotle as interpreted by Christian commentators. Students studied texts and commentaries under masters and proved their ability in formal oral exercises.[3] Historians agree that medieval universities were essentially practical and vocational, and their spread in the 14th and 15th centuries owed much to the demand for educated workers.[4] The aristocracy made comparatively little use of them, and most students seem to have come from the middle ranks of society.[5]

Britain

Oxford took shape towards the end of the 12th century. Cambridge was founded by scholars who left Oxford, an event traditionally dated to 1209. Both began as informal groups of scholars and soon gained privileges from king and pope.[6] Around 1400 there were about 2,000 university students, about 1,500 of them at Oxford.[7]

Scotland's first universities were founded in the 15th century: St Andrews in 1410–11, Glasgow in 1451 and King's College, Aberdeen, in 1495, each under the authority of a bishop.[8]

After Henry VIII broke with Rome, the English universities came under closer royal control. Commissioners were sent to inspect them in 1535, and the teaching of canon law was abolished.[9] In the 16th century teaching moved from the university to the colleges, and salaried professors, readers and lecturers were created.[10] English universities came to centre on general or "liberal" education, unlike continental universities, where law remained important.[11] An Act of 1571 confirmed their corporate status, and from 1604 they elected their own Members of Parliament, a right abolished in 1948.[12]

Eighteenth-century Scotland

University teaching could expand into new subjects. In the winter of 1748–49 Adam Smith began public lectures in Edinburgh on rhetoric and the English language, which the historian Richard Sher calls the first of their kind in Great Britain.[13][14] Hugh Blair later continued them, and in 1760 the town council created an unsalaried university chair for him.[15]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. p. 1. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  2. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 2–3. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  3. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 1–2. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  4. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 4–5. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  5. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  6. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. p. 2. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  7. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 8–9. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  8. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. p. 12. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  9. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. p. 5. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  10. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 5–6. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  11. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 7–8. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  12. ↑ Anderson, Robert (2006). British Universities Past and Present (1st ed.). Hambledon Continuum. pp. 9–10. ISBN 9780826433558. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  13. ↑ Sher, Richard B. (2015). Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Classic ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 108. ISBN 9781474407441. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  14. ↑ Sher, Richard B. (2015). Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Classic ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 108-109. ISBN 9781474407441. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
  15. ↑ Sher, Richard B. (2015). Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Classic ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 109. ISBN 9781474407441. Retrieved 2026-10-23.
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