colleges and universities: Early History

Universities generally consist of groups of schools, faculties, or colleges. They arose in the 12th and 13th cent. in Europe as a means of providing further training in the professions of law, theology, and medicine, and as centers of study for the rediscovered works of Aristotle and the Arab scholars. Of the earliest universities, Salerno (9th cent.) and Montpellier (13th cent.) specialized in medicine; Bologna (1088) in law; and Paris (12th cent.) in theology. Students and faculty were originally organized in guildlike groups. The student groups, known as “nations” and comprising students from particular localities, gradually diminished in power, however, as the faculty, which controlled both teaching and graduation requirements, became more powerful.

In the Middle Ages, universities were usually begun through royal or ecclesiastical initiative or through migrations of students from other universities. The migrations were sometimes influenced by political events. The Univ. of Oxford, for example, was founded (12th cent.) by English students from the Univ. of Paris who were forced to leave that institution as a result of conflicts between England and France; similarly, the university at Leipzig was founded (15th cent.) by German scholars who were driven out of Prague by John Huss's Czech national movement. Medieval universities often had many thousands of students and played an important role in public affairs. Among the famous institutions founded were Salamanca (c.1230), Prague (1348), Vienna (1365), Uppsala (1477), Leiden (1575), and Moscow (1755). The oldest universities in the New World, both founded in 1551, are Mexico Univ. and San Marcos of Lima.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
• Early Years to 1900
• Nineteenth Century
• Early History
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Education: Terms and Concepts