I
OF UNIVERSITIES, ESPECIALLY AMERICAN ONES

The dictionary tells us that the word “university” is derived from the Latin universitas, meaning entirety, more specifically the entirety of knowledge; the primary definition, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is that it denotes “the whole body of teachers and scholars” engaged “in giving and receiving instruction in the higher branches of learning.” Used in that sense, the term emerged in Italy in the eleventh century. It is an open question where it was first used, but Amalfi, Bologna and Padua each assert primacy.

Among the factors that gave rise to the emergence of these new institutions of learning, two probably predominated. One was the recovery, through Arab and Persian sources, of the legacy of Greek learning—Plato, Aristotle, and others. The other was the growing need of the societies developing in and around cities for specialized knowledge. The church needed people trained in the sacred traditions and in the methods for their implementation; the holders of secular power required individuals capable of formulating and applying their edicts; society at large clamored for aid in the struggle with sickness and death. Thus law, medicine and theology (in the order of the alphabet, not chronology or importance) became the three key components of the medieval university; a fourth faculty, sometimes denominated studium generale but more often “philosophy” (literally, love of knowledge), is often described as the precursor of “liberal arts and sciences.”

Although these new institutions of higher learning were generally created (and partially supported) by the local ruler (whether clerical or secular), they shared an important supernational feature: Latin as the language of instruction. Students could—and frequently did—move from one university to another, seeking out the teachers under whom they wanted to study. Just as the Inns of Court in London owed their existence to the lawyers’ needs for housing in the vicinity of the tribunals where they argued their cases, so the fraternities at the universities on the continent of Europe (and similar organizations) originated as housing for students from other countries or principalities.

England deviated from the pattern. Medicine, with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in charge, early on went its own way. The education of barristers (i.e., litigators) became the prerogative of the Inns of Court, leaving theology and philosophy as the main fields or study at the two early universities, Oxford and Cambridge. While on the continent the faculty of philosophy was lagging behind its sisters, in England it became the mainstay of the universities, which eventually became—and until the middle of the 19th century remained—little more than finishing schools for the sons of the aristocracy and of the landed gentry.
That was not the primary concern of the early English settlers in North America. Their principal need was to have ministers for their respective religious establishments. The earliest institutions of higher learning in the colonies (Harvard, 1636; William and Mary, 1693; Yale, 1701) were established to educate ministers for the churches dominant in the respective colonies. Beginning with the College of Philadelphia [founded in 1749; later the University of Pennsylvania], the model became the English college. Thomas Jefferson’s design for the University of Virginia (founded in 1819) followed the French and German patterns as he had come to know them during his extended stay in Paris; in practice it soon became an English- style college.
As the country expanded toward the west, new states considered it a mark of progress to provide for a state university. Minnesota, for example, established a state university in 1851 but did not become a state until 1858. Few of these new universities deserved that name: when the University of Kansas opened its doors in 1866 not a single one of the first students was prepared to do college-level work as it was then defined (and only 22 of them eventually completed the first academic year).

By the end of the nineteenth century one could begin to identify three strands among colleges and universities in the United States. One was the church-sponsored and/or church-related college, in the tradition of the earliest colonial colleges. The major universities, with Harvard in the lead, were embarked on emulating the model of the German universities which in the course of the nineteenth century had placed research in central focus. The third, and the only pattern of genuinely American origin, was the land-grant college, the creation of the 1862 Morrill Act that provided for substantial donations of land held by the federal government to allow the states to establish colleges specifically for the training of agriculturalists, engineers and army officers.

By the middle of the twentieth century, not without considerable contest along the road, the three tracks were in convergence. Virtually every land-grant college now bears the title “university,” many of them offering Ph.D. programs across the spectrum of disciplines. Most formerly church-affiliated colleges now have governing boards with a majority of lay members; many of them have discontinued mandatory denominational courses; few turn away students of other religious identification. Institutions that a hundred years ago proudly proclaimed themselves “doctoral” because they offered instruction not only in medicine but also in a broad range of subjects leading to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy now invite persons seeking doctorates with specialized titles ranging form “Arts” to “Social Welfare.” Others engage in “outreach” activities designed to attract, usually for a fee, student bodies of virtually any description. The common denominator was and is, understandably, the paramount need to generate income.

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