The History Of Higher Education
An institution of higher education and research, which issues academic degrees at all levels (bachelor, master and doctorate), is the apt definition of a modern day university. However, founded in the 9th century, even Medieval Madrassahs or Jami'ah ("university" in Arabic) performed all these functions to the core. Hence, the Guinness Book of World Records recognizes The University of Al Karaouine in Fez, as the oldest degree-granting university in the world with its founding in 859 by the princess Fatima al-Fihri.
The medieval Islamic world was also host to medical schools, where medical degrees and diplomas were issued to students of Islamic medicine who were qualified to be a practicing Doctor of Medicine. Offering a variety of post graduate degrees, and faculties for a theological seminary, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, Islamic astronomy, early Islamic philosophy, and logic in Islamic philosophy, the Al-Azhar University was founded in Cairo, Egypt, in 975.
The University of Constantinople followed by the University of Salerno (9th century), the Preslav Literary School and Ohrid Literary School in the Bulgarian Empire (9th century), were the first theatres of higher education in Medieval Europe. Influenced in many ways by the medieval Madrasah institutions in Islamic Spain, the Emirate of Sicily, and the Middle East (during the Crusades), the first degree-granting universities in Europe were the University of Bologna (1088), the University of Paris (c. 1150, later associated with the Sorbonne), the University of Oxford (1167), the University of Cambridge (1209), the University of Salamanca (1218), the University of Montpellier (1220), the University of Padua (1222), the University of Naples Federico II (1224), and the University of Toulouse. Usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali, the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for the development of medieval universities in Western Europe. 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. Many notable institutions were functioning even outside Europe, for example the famous Hanlin Academy, established during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) in China.
Many external influences, such as eras of humanism, Enlightenment, Reformation, and revolution, shaped research universities during their development and transition from the medieval era to the modern one. By the 18th century, universities published their own research journals, and by the 19th century, the German and the French university models had arisen. Universities concentrated on science in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they started to become accessible to the masses after 1914.
Until the 19th century, religion played a significant role in university curriculum; however, the role of religion in research universities decreased in the 19th century, and by the end of the 19th century, the German university model had spread around the world. The British also established universities worldwide, and higher education became available to the masses not only in Europe. In a general sense, the basic structure and aims of universities have remained constant over the years.
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