An institution of higher education which offers study at degree level. Courses may be taken leading to bachelor, master, or doctoral level. Both academic and vocational courses are followed, leading to qualifications in such professions as medicine, teaching, engineering, and the law, sometimes in conjunction with professional bodies. Research is given a high priority. The earliest European universities are Bologna (10th-c), Paris (1170), Oxford (1249), and Cambridge (1284). The first Chinese university was established in 124 BC; by AD 200 it had 3000 students, following 7-year degrees.
History
Because of this definition, there is controversy about which university is the world's oldest. If we consider a university as a corporation of students, then Plato's Academy is the first, historically-documented university. In the western world, the choice is among Takshashila, Nalanda, Ratnagiri University and Al-Azhar University. The University of Constantinople (Byzantine Empire), re-founded in AD 849, by the regent Bardas of emperor Michail III, is generally considered the first institution of higher learning with the characteristics we associate today with University (research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera). A third university whose ruins were only recently excavated was Ratnagiri University in Orissa. Al-Azhar University, founded in Cairo (Egypt) in the 10th century, offered a variety of post-graduate degrees, and is usually regarded as the first full-fledged university. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes the University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco as the oldest university in the world with its founding in 859 CE.
The awarding of aic titles was not a custom of other educational institutions at the time but ancient institutions of higher learning also existed in China (Academies (Shuyuan)), Greece (the Academy), and Persia (Academy of Gundishapur)
The School, 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 to resemble a university.
Institutions bearing a resemblance to the modern university also existed in Persia and the Islamic world prior to Al-Azhar University, most notably the Academy of Gundishapur.
In ancient China, there were a number of institutions of higher learning that vaguely resembled universities in the Western sense of the word. Nanjing University traces its history back to the imperial central school at Nanjing founded in 258 and the Imperial Nanjing University became the first comprehensive institution as a combination of education and research consisted of five faculties in 470. These initiatives were a foreshadowing of the rise, from the 11th century onward, of universities in Western Europe.
The first European medieval university was the University of Magnaura in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), founded in 849 by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, followed by the University of Salerno (9th century), University of Bologna (1088) in Bologna, Italy, and the University of Paris (c. Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali. In the early medieval period, most new universities were founded from pre-existing schools, usually when these schools were deemed to have become primarily sites of higher education. Many historians state that universities and cathedral schools were a continuation of the interest in learning promoted by monasteries.
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. (See Degrees of the University of Oxford 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 Mali, West Africa, the celebrated Islamic University of Sankore (established 989 C.E.) had no central administration; It was claimed that the intellectual freedom enjoyed in Western Universities was inspired from universities like Sankore and Qurtuba (Muslim Spain) universities. (Al-Furqan Heritage Foundation-London publishes a list of the manuscripts just in Ahmed Baba library in 5 volumes.)
Like all other Islamic universities, its students came from all over the world. The university was known for its high standards and admission requirements
There is a growing movement, dubbed the University of the Third Age, "the U3A", which consists of small, independent and autonomous groups of retired scholars and others engaged in study for its own sake, of charitable status and without the award of any form of degree or qualification: a university in the ancient sense of a corporation of scholars.
Organization
Although each institution is differently organized, nearly all universities have a board of trustees, a president, chancellor or rector, at least one vice president, vice-chancellor or vice-rector, and deans of various divisions. Universities are generally divided into a number of academic departments, schools or faculties. However, many public universities in the world have a considerable degree of financial, research and pedagogical autonomy. Private universities are privately funded having generally a broader independence from state policies.
Despite the variable policies, or cultural and economic standards available in different geographical locations create a tremendous disparity between universities around the world and even inside a country, the universities are usually among the foremost research and advanced training providers in every society. Most universities not only offer courses in subjects ranging from the natural sciences, engineering, architecture or medicine, to sports administration, social sciences, law or humanities, they also offer many amenities to their student population including a variety of places to eat, banks, bookshops, print shops, job centres, and bars. In addition, most major universities have their own libraries, sports centers, restaurants, students' unions, botanical gardens, astronomical observatories, university hospitals and clinics, computer labs, research laboratories, business incubators and many other.
Universities around the world
The funding and organisation of universities is very different in different countries around the world. In some countries universities are predominantly funded by the state, while in others funding may come from donors or from fees which students attending the university must pay. In some countries the vast majority of students attend university in their local town, while in other countries universities attract students from all over the world, and may provide university accommodation for their students.
Universities and student life in different countries
See also: List of colleges and universities by country.
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Selective admissions
Admission systems and university structures vary widely around the world (see College admissions). Differences are marked in countries where universities fulfill the role of community colleges in the United States and Europe.
The usual practice in the United States today is to call an institution made up of several schools and/or colleges and granting a range of post-graduate degrees a "university", while a smaller institution only granting bachelor's or associate's degrees is called a "college". (See liberal arts colleges.) Nevertheless, a few of America's older universities, such as Boston College, Dartmouth College, and College of William and Mary, have retained the term "college" in their names for historical reasons, even though they offer a wide range of higher degrees. On the other hand, many smaller, principally undergradate institutions call themselves "universities," primarily for marketing purposes to make them appear more prestigious.
Criticism
Many have argued that the future of the university as a traditionally conceived brick and mortar edifice is in doubt due to a number of factors. In his groundbreaking study of the American university since World War II, The Knowledge Factory, Stanley Aronowitz argues that the American university has been besieged by growing unemployment issues, the pressures of big business on the land grant university, as well as the political passivity and ivory tower naivete of American academics. In a somewhat more theoretical vein, the late Bill Readings contends in his 1995 study The University in Ruins that the university around the world has been hopelessly commodified by globalization and the bureaucratic non-value of "excellence."
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