See also: University Station

Representation of a university class in the 1350s

University of Salamanca (Spain) founded in 1218

University Portal

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master, and doctorate) in a variety of subjects. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of teachers and scholars".

History

Early history

The tower of the University of Coimbra, the oldest Portuguese university.

Degree ceremony at the University of Oxford. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor in MA gown and hood, Proctor in official dress and new Doctors of Philosophy in scarlet full dress. Behind them, a bedel, another Doctor and Bachelors of Arts and Medicine.

The original Latin word "universitas", first used in time of renewed interest in Classical Greek and Roman tradition, tried to reflect this feature of the Academy of Plato (established 385 BC).

The term "academia" is sometimes extended to a number of educational institutions of non-European antiquity, specifically in China, India and Persia:

• Confucian academies, such as the legendary Shang Hsiang, and later Taixue and Guozijian, succeeded by the medieval Academies of Classical Learning
• Taxila in Gandhara and the Buddhist Nalanda University in Bihar (5th century BC)
• The Sassanid Academy of Gundishapur was founded in the 5th century.

The University of Constantinople, founded in 849, by the regent Bardas of emperor Michael III, is considered by some to be the first institution of higher learning with some of the characteristics we associate today with a university (research and teaching, auto-administration, academic independence, et cetera), though it did not grant academic degrees. The first universities to issue diplomas were the Bimaristan medical university-hospitals of the medieval Islamic world, where medical diplomas were issued to students of Islamic medicine who were qualified to be practicing doctors of medicine from the 9th century.^[1] 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.^[2] Al-Azhar University, founded in Cairo, Egypt in the 10th century, offered a variety of post-graduate degrees, and is often considered the first full-fledged university. (For more on early universities see List of oldest universities in continuous operation.)

Medieval European universities

Stanley Aronowitz, The Knowledge Factory. Boston: Beacon, 2000.

Clyde W. Barrow, Universities and the Capitalist State: Corporate Liberalism and the Reconstruction of American Higher Education, 1894–1928, University of Wisconsin Press 1990 ^{ISBN needed}

Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945–1955, Oxford University Press 1992 ^{ISBN needed}

Olaf Pedersen, The First Universities : Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe, Cambridge University Press, 1998 ^{ISBN needed}

Bill Readings, The University in Ruins. Harvard University Press, 1996. .

Thomas F. Richards, The Cold War Within American Higher Education: Rutgers University As a Case Study,Pentland Press 1998 ^{ISBN needed}

Walter Ruegg (ed), A History of the University in Europe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (3 vols) (vol 3 reviewed by Laurence Brockliss in the Times Literary Supplement, no 5332, 10 June 2005, pages 3–4)