Introduction to Universities and Colleges
Universities and Colleges, institutions of higher learning. Almost all countries provide for some form of education beyond secondary schooling. The institutions vary considerably in requirements for admission and in the purposes they serve. As a general rule, however, they undertake to train students for vocations, to prepare them for professions or for study in advanced professional schools, or to give them a broad cultural background through studies in the liberal arts (history, literature, philosophy, science, etc.). The liberal arts background is intended to help the student become a concerned and well-informed citizen as well as to enrich his or her personal life.
In the United States and Canada, the word college has at least two meanings: (1) an independent school that offers four-year courses in liberal arts leading to the bachelor's degree (B. A. or B.S.); and (2) a division or unit of a university offering courses within a particular field of study.
A true university is a group of colleges under the same administration. It has at least two divisions: (1) a four-year liberal arts college for undergraduates; and (2) a college, called a graduate school, for students with bachelor's degrees who are seeking advanced (master's and doctor's) degrees. Large universities also have specialized undergraduate colleges, concentrating on such fields as education, commerce, or journalism, and various professional schools to train physicians, engineers, lawyers, etc. Major universities are centers of research as well as teaching institutions. Some of their faculty members have few or no teaching duties.
Institutions whose names include such words as polytechnic, technology, or institute usually emphasize training in science and engineering, but may also offer programs in other fields. Military colleges are often called academies, and theological schools seminaries, but both terms are sometimes applied to other kinds of institutions.
Teachers colleges prepare students for elementary and secondary school teaching, but may also offer liberal arts programs. A junior college offers the first two years of a liberal arts course. It may also offer various vocational courses, such as dental technology. Public junior colleges are often called community colleges.
The official name of an institution does not necessarily indicate the type of studies it offers. Some “universities are really liberal arts colleges. Some “colleges have graduate schools and are really universities. A good guide to an institution's program of studies, or curriculum, is its catalog or bulletin.
Accredited colleges and universities are those schools that are certified as meeting certain standards with regard to such matter as curriculum, staff, libraries, and equipment. Agencies that do the accrediting include regional associations of schools, state officials, and professional societies. For example, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education accredits medical schools.
Control and Administration
Nearly half of the universities and colleges in the United States are public institutions. They are supported by taxes and controlled by federal, state, or local governments. Land-grant colleges and universities are supported by federal and state money. Public institutions account for about three-fourths of the total enrollment of full-time students.
The remaining colleges and universities are privately supported. They depend primarily on tuition, fees, gifts, and income from investments. Federal grants for some educational purposes are available. Federal Aid to Education Many private schools are supported or controlled by religious groups.
Each institution operates under a charter, usually granted by the state government. The institution usually has a board of trustees or regents, who are responsible for making policy. (In many institutions, however, the board largely follows the faculty's wishes regarding policy.) Board members of public institutions are elected or are appointed by some government official or agency. Trustees of a private institution may be chosen by the alumni, by other board members, or by a religious group supporting the institution. Trustees are generally businessmen or religious leaders rather than professional educators.
The board selects a president or chancellor as chief executive officer of the institution. Within a university each school or college (such as the graduate school or college of medicine) is headed by a dean. A chairman heads each department of instruction or field of study (such as history or chemistry). A faculty member usually begins as an instructor or lecturer, and may advance to assistant professor, associate professor, and finally professor. Deans of students handle matters of discipline, counsel students who are making low grades, and may advise students on personal problems. The registrar keeps scholastic records.
Admissions
Each institution determines the requirements that entering students must meet. Most institutions require an official record showing graduation from an accredited high school with 15 or 16 course credits or units, including certain required courses. Some accept only students in the upper half of their high school classes, and many require an entrance examination. To help select students, many institutions use the results of either the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) of the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) or the American College Test (ACT) of the American College Testing Program.
The CEEB conducts the College Level Examination Program (CLEP) that enables a student to demonstrate knowledge gained outside of formal course work. Some institutions accept the results of these tests to exempt students from certain introductory courses.
Academic Program
The academic year or calendar is about nine months long. Most schools begin their school year in August and end it in May. It is divided into two 16- or 17-week semesters or three 12-week sessions called quarters. Many schools operating on a 9-month calendar also offer 6-, 8-, or 10-week summer sessions. Some schools operate the year round, offering three 16- or 17-week sessions called trimesters, or four 12-week quarters. Students generally attend two trimesters or three quarters each year; they can, however, reduce the time needed to finish their college work by attending all of the sessions.
Some colleges have a one-month interim or intersession between two semesters. The interim is a period in which students can be employed in internships in their chosen field or study a single subject intensively.
In a typical semester program, the average undergraduate student has 15 hours of classes a week, and gets 15 hours of credit each semester. (Normally, each course hour a week earns one credit. Laboratory classes usually require two or three hours in the lab for each unit of credit.) To graduate, a student must usually earn 120 semester hours of credit. Under the quarter system, an equivalent amount of work is required, but the credit-hour system differs; about 180 quarter hours are required for graduation.
Certain courses (such as freshman, or first-year, English) are required, but the student usually has a wide choice of elective courses as well. In his sophomore (second) or junior (third) year he begins work on his major—some subject, such as mathematics or English, that will be his field of concentration and to which he will devote considerable time. He may also select a second field of concentration, to which he devotes somewhat less time, as a minor.
In addition to the usual courses that involve some combination of lecture, discussion, and laboratory work, many schools offer students various special programs. Honors programs may offer underclassmen—freshmen and sophomores—the opportunity to study a subject in greater depth. Independent study often provides the upper-classman—junior or senior—an opportunity to guide his own work.
Off-campus programs let the student spend a session or year in a different environment. A work-study program allows him to spend time working at a job that may be closely related to the career he is planning. Some schools arrange exchange programs with foreign universities or establish their own branches in other countries.
The student in graduate school may spend less time in the classroom than the undergraduate, but must do independent research and usually write a thesis or dissertation on his findings. The period required for a graduate degree depends largely on the student, but the minimum is usually one year for the master's degree (M.A. or M.S.) and three years for the doctor's (Ph.D.). Most professional schools require three or four years of study.
Student Life
Students are expected to spend about two hours in study for each hour in class. The student studies textbooks and other instructional materials, takes notes on class lectures and discussions, does supplementary reading, writes essays and reports, and may do laboratory work. There is usually an examination in each course at the end of the semester or other session.
College life is not all study, however. There are many extracurricular activities to develop interests outside the classroom. These include athletics, dramatics, music, work on college publications, social and religious activities, debating and oratory, and campus or off-campus politics. Many colleges have a student union building, which serves as a main center for social and extracurricular activities.
How closely the student's personal and social life is oriented to his college or university varies from institution to institution (as well as from person to person). At one extreme are the residential schools, where almost all of the students live in college dormitories and other student housing on or near campus. The student eats in a campus dining hall and his friends are most likely to be other students. At the other extreme are the commuter schools, a large percentage of whose students live away from the campus, often with their own families. A student may come to campus only to attend classes and to use the library and other instructional facilities. He may see little of other students outside of the classroom.
In many schools, fraternities and sororities provide members with room and board as well as with comradeship and recreation. Fraternities and Sororities Some students join housing cooperatives, to save money by working together to provide room, board, and recreation.
Many students meet all or part of their tuition and other expenses with scholarships, fellowships (for graduate students), student loans, grants, or part-time jobs.
History
Higher education has existed since ancient times. In the Greek city-states of the fourth, third, and second centuries B.C., a pattern of formal education emerged that was somewhat similar to the modern sequence of elementary, secondary, and higher education. Sparta had a program of compulsory military education at roughly college level for male citizens between 18 and 20 years of age. The tutorial schools of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were for advanced education.
Forerunners to UniversitiesThe university was a medieval development. Cathedral and monastery schools were its forerunners. Cathedral schools, which at first only prepared young men for the clergy, were established during the early Middle Ages. Monastic schools, established within monasteries and run by the monks, initially prepared young men to be priests and monks. By the ninth century, the monastic schools offered instruction to other students as well. From the 6th to the 11th century, the monastic schools were the dominant form of higher education. In the 11th century, cathedral schools, which also accepted students who were not preparing for the clergy, began to overtake the monastic schools in importance.
A student who completed studies at a cathedral school received a license to teach within the diocese served by the cathedral. In time, the pope gave some of the more prominent schools the right to grant a more general license entitling the graduate to teach at schools outside the diocese.
General centers of study grew up in connection with some of the prominent cathedral schools. These centers attracted students from far away. The teaching licenses from these schools became recognized as general certificates of achievement.
Early universities grew out of these learning centers. As a center attracted larger numbers of students and professors, the professors formed guilds for their mutual benefit. Students also formed guilds. The Latin word universitas, which originally referred to any guild or association, came to refer specifically to these academic guilds.
It is difficult to say when a particular center became a university. Many centers had the character of universities long before any formal recognition was granted. Some historians regard the center at Salerno, in southern Italy, as having been a university as early as the ninth century; students gathered there primarily for medical studies. The University of Al Azhar in Cairo, Egypt, was established in conjunction with a mosque in 970.
By 1100, several centers of higher learning were well on the way to becoming universities. One was a school at Chartres, France, that attracted professors and students interested primarily in grammar and literature. A second center was at Paris, where students came mainly to study logic and theology. A third, at Bologna in northern Italy, was noted for studies in civil and canon law.
Medieval UniversitiesFrederick I, king of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor, was the first to officially establish a university when he granted a charter to the University of Bologna in 1158.
Almost 20 universities were formally established during the 13th century. The University of Paris, generally regarded as the greatest of the medieval universities, was given a charter in 1200 by Philip Augustus, king of France. The Sorbonne, which became the leading faculty, or division, at the University of Paris, was founded in 1253. Formal recognition of universities came from secular authority in some instances, as with Bologna and Paris, and from religious authority in others.
The English universities at Oxford and Cambridge were early institutions of outstanding merit. Oxford was modeled on the University of Paris. It was established in the 1100's, but was not chartered until the mid-1200's. Cambridge was formed by a group of masters, or professors, who broke away from Oxford in the early 1200's. Many of the other early universities were also started by masters or students breaking away from an established institution.
The curriculum of the early universities included the traditional liberal-arts subject matter of the cathedral and monastic schools—grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. To these were added physical sciences, ethics, politics, and metaphysics. Generally, the student studied four years of the traditional liberal arts. He could then receive the baccalaureate (bachelor's degree), his license to be an assistant teacher. To become a master teacher, he studied three more years of liberal arts and Aristotelian philosophy, and wrote a thesis.
By the end of the 1200's, France had major universities at Montpellier and Toulouse, as well as at Paris; Spain, at Salamanca and Seville; and Portugal, at Lisbon. The University of Krakw, Poland, was founded in 1364. The first German university was founded in Heidelberg in 1386.
Universities In the New WorldIn the New World, the Spanish founded what are now the University of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, in 1538 and the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1551.
In the English colonies, Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts in 1636, William and Mary in Virginia in 1693, and Yale in Connecticut in 1701. The original purpose of these, and of many of the other early American colleges, was to give young men a liberal education and to prepare them for the professions, especially for the ministry. Colleges followed the traditional European curriculum of liberal arts.
The earliest English-language institution in Canada was the College of New Brunswick at Fredericton, New Brunswick, established in 1785 (chartered in 1800); it became the University of New Brunswick. The University of King's College was established in 1789 in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and was later moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Laval University in Quebec, established in 1852 as an outgrowth of a college founded in 1663, was the earliest French-language university in North America.
Emergence of Modern UniversitiesThe University of Halle in Germany, opened in 1694, introduced the idea of the university as a center for research. The University of Gttingen, founded in 1737, advanced this trend in higher education. The concept of academic freedom—the right of teachers to present ideas without interference—originated in the German universities in the 18th century.
The late 18th and the 19th century saw the spread of new scientific studies, extension of the concept of academic freedom, and a widening acceptance of the university not only as a conveyor of established knowledge, but as a center of research. These developments, which originated in Germany, influenced other European universities first and those in the New World a little later.
In the United States, the first state universities were the University of Georgia (chartered 1785, opened 1801) and the University of North Carolina (chartered 1789, opened 1795). As the idea of public higher education gained support, several states attempted to have private institutions made public or brought under government supervision. The private institutions argued for their right to remain independent. The conflict was not resolved until 1819, when the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on the Dartmouth College case, recognized such institutions as private corporations. The case assured the continued existence of private higher education in the United States.
A trend toward greater democracy in United States higher education was evident in increasing opportunities for women to go to college. During the 1820's and 1830's, a number of post-secondary schools, called seminaries, were established for women, but they did not grant degrees. Among the first institutions that did grant degrees to women were Oberlin, which admitted women in 1837 to become the first coeducational college, and Georgia Female College (now Wesleyan College), which opened in 1839.
In the early part of the 19th century, churches were the main founders of new colleges and universities. Support for new public institutions lagged until 1862, when Congress passed the first Morrill Act, the Land-Grant College Act. The act granted federal lands to each state. Proceeds from sale of these lands supported institutions offering, but not restricted to, agricultural and engineering studies. This act and the second Morrill Act (1890) were of major importance in the development of the widespread system of public higher education in the United States.
The spread of secondary schools in the late 19th century allowed for the upgrading and standardization of college admission requirements. Selective admissions developed as more and better-prepared students sought college education. University-level curriculums for teacher education and for business education were developed in the latter half of the 19th century.
Contemporary TrendsAn outstanding development in higher education in the 20th century has been the rapid increase in the number of students. In the United States, enrollment increased tenfold between 1900 and 1950. Existing institutions were expanded and many new ones established. The bulk of the enrollment shifted from private to public institutions. By the early 1970's, the small private colleges—forced by higher operating costs to raise tuition beyond the means of many students—began suffering declining enrollments. Many had to close.
Junior colleges were first established early in the century. After World War II, there was a tremendous growth in the number of junior colleges supported by local governments.
In the 1950's and 1960's, many institutions introduced programs intended to make curriculums more flexible and adaptable to individual interests and capabilities. Among these were early admission and advanced placement plans, honors programs, independent studies, and studies abroad.
New curriculums also continued to play an important part. Area studies, such as Russian studies and Chinese studies, were widely introduced in the 1950's. Special curriculums in urban problems, in women's studies, and in the history and culture of black Americans began to develop in the 1960's.
During the 1960's, a number of campuses in the United States were hit by student demonstrations and riots. (Student unrest was evident also in other parts of the world, notably Japan and France.) It is hard to say what, at any given school at any given time, caused unrest to boil over into violence. There were many apparent causes—unwillingness, real or apparent, of the administration to agree to student demands for a role in faculty appointments; disagreement over regulations covering students' personal behavior; dissatisfaction with academic programs and administrative procedures; and others.
Many demonstrations and riots broke out over the efforts of students opposed to United States involvement in the Vietnamese War to force universities to abandon ROTC programs or to bar from the campus recruiters for companies producing chemicals or armaments for the war. College protest reached its height in 1970 in nationwide demonstrations against President Nixon's ordering of a massive United States military incursion into Cambodia. After United States direct involvement in the war was ended in the early 1970's, the number of protests greatly declined.
By the mid-1970's, student involvement in social and political issues seemed to have declined. Enrollments decreased in the humanities and social sciences and increased in the more directly career-oriented disciplines, such as business, engineering, and medicine. This trend continued into the 1990's.