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The other day, I was quite surprised to learn that the University of
London was founded by Royal Charter in 1836, that it is the third oldest
university in England and is also England’s largest university.
Founded by Whig and Radical dissenters, the University of London was
the first in England to grant degrees to students who were not members
of the Church of England; first to offer degrees in science (1859); first
to offer degrees to women (1868).
Apparently before 1836, there were only two universities in England--Oxford
and Cambridge! I was surprised how few are the truly ancient universities:
Bologna (1200), Padua (1222), Naples (1224) and Rome (1303) in Italy;
Paris (1215) and Toulouse (1230) in France; Salamanca (1230) in Spain;
Coimbra (1260) in Portugal; Oxford (1249) and Cambridge (1284) in England;
Prague (1348) in Czechoslovakia; Krakow (1364) in Poland; Vienna (1365)
in Austria; Heidelberg (1386) in Germany.
Practically everyone wants to move up to be accepted as a full member
of some exclusive club. So as a middle class came into being and expanded,
the newly well-to-do wanted better things for their offspring, including
higher education. Not surprisingly, modern universities imitate the ancient
ones--looking as if one has always been a member is important!
One wonders, is there a gap of over four hundred years between the early
universities and a boom in the university industry that began--along with
so many other things we take for granted--in the nineteenth century?
Only a handful of universities seem to have been created from the fifteenth
century to the eighteenth century. They include: St. Andrews (1411), Glasgow
(1451), Aberdeen (1494) and Edinburgh (1583) in Scotland; Basle (1460),
Lausanne ( 1537) and Geneva (1559) in Switzerland; Copenhagen (1479) in
Denmark; Uppsala (1477) and Lund (1668) in Sweden; Lima (1551) in Peru;
Mexico City (1552) in Mexico; Bogota(1572) in Columbia; Leyden (1575)
and Groningen (1614) in the Netherlands; Cordoba (1613) in Argentina;
Sucre (1624) in Bolivia; Havana (1712) in Cuba; and Harvard (1636), Yale
(1701), Princeton (1746), Columbia (1754), Brown (1764) and Dartmouth
(1769) in New England. Only twenty-four more in four hundred years?
Did I overlook someone? Quite possibly.
New York University was created in 1831. From NYU, we learn, “The
opening of the University of London in 1828 convinced New Yorkers that
New York, too, should have such a university.” (Explaining the small
discrepancy in dates, we might guess the University of London likely had
already started a few years before its Royal Charter was granted.)
Other top flight US schools such as Cornell (1865) and Stanford (1885)
were founded after 1801. Surprisingly, at first, even the prestigious
University of Berlin (1810) was a nineteenth century creation, coinciding
with the rise of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The University of Virginia
(1819) was founded by Thomas Jefferson in the nineteenth century too.
And what are the oldest universities in Canada, McGill (1821) and the
University of Toronto (1827), began in the nineteenth century. Here at
home, the University of Saskatchewan started in 1907; the University of
Regina in 1975.
It seems likely that almost all of the thousands of universities and colleges
that exist world-wide today were created after 1801! Certainly, all assumed
their current size and purposes with the boom in prosperity, government-funding,
and population that followed World War II. They are, in fact, creations
of the last quarter of the modern Age--that is, 1801 to 2001. With coats
of arms, ecclesiastical garb, arcane titles, some gothic architcture,
solemn authority and tradition, they may often look ancient, but few are!
As one would expect, the spread of universities coincides with the spread
of Western civilization: First in Italy, then France and Iberia, England,
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Germany. Next, the fringes of Europe:
Scotland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Universities were established in the more important Spanish and British
colonies, not the French. Significantly, New England built before the
War of Independence more universities than England, probably more than
any other country!
The growth of universities after 1801 can be added to the manifest evidence
indicating the modern Age is substantively different from all other human
history.
The advent of liberty, I think it can be shown, is the sole reason for
this sea change.
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