University

A lecture at the University of West London.

A university is an institution where teaching and research is done. The word university comes from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, roughly meaning "community of teachers and scholars." People can attend university to get a degree. Unlike the schooling they have done before, the courses at university are specialized. A person studying biology at university has lots of courses about biology and not very many courses in other fields, like languages or history. To get a higher degree, people must do some research.

History

Area above the old University of Bologna buildings, founded in 1088

The universities were born in Europe during the Middle Ages. The first institution of this type was the University of Bologna that later became a model for similar centers of education. This term can often be used in other cultures to mean centers of higher education and higher thought, although their creation was often well before the Middle Ages.

At first, the universities had formed themselves according to the model of the professional groups and like almost everything in the Middle Ages, they remained tied to the Catholic Church. At the beginning, they had worked to teach the so-called "seven liberal arts" (the trivium and the quadrivium):

• Trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric.
• Quadrivium: arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and music.

That earliest division caused the present divisions between literary and scientific fields. The world's oldest university is Qarawiyyin university.

Organization

A university can include several campuses, or different places where classes are taught. In each campus there are several faculties and university schools (mainly for teaching), and also laboratories, departments and institutes of research. Many campuses also have housing for students in buildings called dormitories and structures like libraries, study rooms, and gymnasiums for students that live there. Each school offers many courses that students take to earn a degree. The person with the highest right to control and to command in a university is the rector, who governs the university with the help of the party of vice-rectors and of other organs such as the social council and the governing body.

Famous universities

United Kingdom

Graduation ceremony at the University of Oxford.

• University of Manchester
• University of Cambridge
• University of Oxford
• Open University
• University College London
• University of Exeter
• Durham University
• King's College London
• University of Leeds
• University of Wales
• University of Glasgow
• University of Edinburgh
• University of St Andrews
• University of Aberdeen
• University of Bristol
• University of Dundee
• University of Inverness
• Queens University, Belfast

China

• Peking University
• Tsinghua University

Germany

• Free University of Berlin
• Goethe University Frankfurt
• University of Tübingen

Hong Kong

• University of Hong Kong

Malaysia

• University of Malaya
• Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Mexico

• UNAM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The Biggest and most important university in Mexico and Latin America
• UdG,University of Guadalajara.It is the second oldest university in Mexico,regarded as one of the most significant universities in Mexico.
• UAM, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana
• IPN, Instituto Politécnico Nacional
• ITESM, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey
• ITAM, Instituto Tecnoloógico Autónomo de México

Sweden

• Chalmers University
• Karolinska Institute
• Lund University
• Royal Institute of Technology
• Stockholm School of Economics
• Uppsala University
• Umeå University

Finland

• Åbo Akademi University

United States

There is a group of famous universities called the Ivy League. They are:

• Harvard University
• Princeton University
• Yale University
• Brown University
• Cornell University
• Dartmouth College
• Columbia University
• University of Pennsylvania

Some other famous universities are:

• California Institute of Technology
• Duke University
• MIT
• Stanford University
• University of Chicago
• Georgetown University
• University of California, Berkeley
• Ohio State University
• Illinois State University

Canada

• Carleton University
• McGill University
• McMaster University
• Queen's University
• University of British Columbia
• University of New Brunswick
• University of Ottawa
• University of Toronto
• University of Waterloo
• University of Western Ontario

Poland

• University of Warsaw
• Jagiellonian University

Japan

• University of Tokyo
• University of Kyoto
• Waseda University

Italy

• University of Bologna

Australia

• The Australian National University
• University of Melbourne

Chile

• University of Chile (Universidad de Chile)
• Catholic University of Chile (Universidad Católica de Chile)
• Metropolitan Technologic University (Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana)

Turkey

• Galatasaray University (İstanbul)

Romania

• Naval Academy "Mircea cel Batran" ANMB

South Korea

• Seoul National University
• Yonsei University
• Korea University

Related pages

• College
• Education

Other websites

• History of the Universities (Spanish)