In part one of a three-part mini-series on the theme of "university", we go on a whirlwind tour of the history of universities, from medieval student guilds in Bologna to the modern day.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s the start of our next three-part mini-series, this time on the theme of “university”.
[00:00:31] In part one, today’s episode, we’ll go on a whirlwind journey through the history of universities and higher education, from the Medieval period to the present day.
[00:00:42] In part two, we’ll zoom in and talk about universities in the UK, the different types of universities, what life is like at a British university, and I’ll share a load of my personal experience too, as I spent a total of five years studying at universities in the UK.
[00:01:02] And in part three, the final part, we’ll talk about something that said it was a university, but was later accused of being a complete fraud: Trump University.
[00:01:14] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:20] There are practically no institutions that have survived for 1,000 years.
[00:01:26] The Vatican City only goes back just over 700, the “ancient” city of Machu Picchu is not yet 600 years old, and even sandwiches have only been around for 250.
[00:01:40] Yet in just over 60 years’ time, one institution will celebrate its 1,000 year anniversary.
[00:01:50] The University of Bologna is, by some measures, the world’s oldest university. It was founded in the year 1088, some 937 years ago.
[00:02:05] If you go there today, the university doesn’t seem very old, or at least it doesn’t look so different from the rest of the city.
[00:02:15] But of course, 1,000 years ago, it was very different.
[00:02:20] It bore little resemblance to any modern university: no sprawling campus, no central library, no stone quadrangles where students wandered around in gowns.
[00:02:34] In fact, the “university” was more of an idea than a formal structure; it was really an informal gathering of young men who congregated in the same place and hired older, more learned men to instruct them.
[00:02:52] Now, before we get into how this worked in practice, and what they were studying, we should address the question of “why?”.
[00:03:03] Why then, and why there?
[00:03:05] Why do we see universities springing up in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries?
[00:03:13] Why in Europe in particular?
[00:03:16] Well, a few things were happening at once.
[00:03:20] Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries was finally becoming a little more stable.
[00:03:27] Populations were growing, towns were expanding, and trade was starting to flourish.
[00:03:34] In places like northern Italy, new city-states were booming with merchants, bankers and notaries. These were societies that needed contracts, charters, and legal expertise.
[00:03:50] At the same time, something extraordinary happened. Through contact with the Islamic world, in Spain, Sicily, and during the Crusades, European scholars rediscovered long-lost works of ancient philosophers, physicians, and thinkers.
[00:04:09] In Bologna, a copy of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, the great code of Roman law, re-emerged. This was alongside works of Aristotle, the great Greek physician Galen, and more.
[00:04:24] Suddenly, there was a sophisticated body of knowledge just waiting to be studied.
[00:04:32] The Catholic Church was also a huge factor.
[00:04:36] It was the single most powerful institution in Europe, owning vast amounts of land, collecting taxes, and even running its own courts.
[00:04:47] Historically, it had been where knowledge and learning was confined to.
[00:04:52] Monks were practically the only group in society that could read and write; books had to be meticulously copied by hand, by monks, of course, and these sources of knowledge were kept in monasteries, often under lock and key.
[00:05:10] But by this point, the church’s needs had evolved.
[00:05:15] To manage its sprawling empire it needed more than just monks who could pray and copy manuscripts. It needed educated clergy: men trained not only in theology but also in law, philosophy, and the practical business of administration.
[00:05:35] So, on the one hand you had these booming towns and ambitious rulers who wanted lawyers and administrators.
[00:05:44] On the other, you had the Church demanding skilled administrators and legal experts.
[00:05:50] And in the middle, you had rediscovered texts of Roman law and classical philosophy providing the material to study.
[00:05:58] It was a case of right time, right place.
[00:06:02] Now, importantly, these early universities weren’t “founded” in the sense we might think of today. It wasn’t the Church or a king who founded the University of Bologna.
[00:06:16] It was the students themselves.
[00:06:18] They banded together in guilds, pooled their money, and hired masters to teach them. This is what “universitas” originally meant, not “a university” as we think of today, but a corporation of students.
[00:06:36] And what gave these communities staying power, the ability to continue year after year, was recognition from the pope.
[00:06:48] Popes issued charters granting universities privileges, such as exemption from local taxes, the right to be tried in church courts, and most importantly, the authority for their degrees to be recognised across Christendom.
[00:07:04] In other words, someone could take their degree from the University of Bologna and show it to their master in Paris, and it would be recognised as valid.
[00:07:15] Now, in terms of what students would study at these universities, the curriculum was surprisingly uniform.
[00:07:25] A young man, and they were almost always men, would typically begin with what was known as the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
[00:07:36] In practical terms, this meant first mastering Latin, which was the language of the church.
[00:07:43] Then, mastering how to craft an argument and deliver a speech.
[00:07:48] And then it was logic: the art of reason, evaluating statements logically and systematically.
[00:07:56] It wasn’t so different from some of the skills that you might have learned at university.
[00:08:03] And once the young man had mastered those, he would move on to the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
[00:08:14] Together, these seven subjects made up the so-called “liberal arts,” which were the foundation of medieval higher education.
[00:08:25] After this, the most ambitious and wealthy students could progress to the higher faculties of law, medicine, and theology.
[00:08:34] And, not unlike the modern day, different universities excelled at different subjects.
[00:08:41] Law was especially important at Bologna, theology dominated in Paris, and medicine was strong in places like Salerno.
[00:08:51] Degrees could take years, even decades, to complete, and many students never finished, again, not so dissimilar to some modern universities.
[00:09:03] And by the 13th and 14th centuries, universities had appeared in Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, Padua, Prague, and Heidelberg.
[00:09:14] Wherever they were founded, they became magnets for ambitious men and symbols of prestige for the rulers who would often sponsor them, paying for their fees and living expenses, with the expectation that they would return and serve them after they graduated.
[00:09:32] A little like an employer today paying for someone to go and do an MBA.
[00:09:38] After all, for these young men, there was a clear incentive to go to university.
[00:09:45] Mastering Roman and canon law wasn’t just an intellectual exercise; it was a ticket to a career as a notary, a judge, or an adviser to a bishop or prince.
[00:09:58] In a society where almost all power was mediated through law or the Church, education became a pathway to influence, and one that was worth paying for.
[00:10:12] Now, although by the 14th century or so, universities were well-established, and there were around 50 scattered across Europe, they still only educated an extreme minority of the population, so we’re probably talking about fewer than 50,000 students at every university in total.
[00:10:36] And most graduates would become clergyman, priests, or some form of administrator within the church or a city state system.
[00:10:47] But as Europe moved into the Renaissance, universities began to change.
[00:10:54] Instead of focusing almost entirely on theology and law, a new movement of scholars known as humanists championed the studia humanitatis: the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
[00:11:11] These were subjects drawn from the classical world, inspired by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts.
[00:11:20] They shifted the focus away from purely preparing men for service in the church or the courtroom, and towards shaping a more rounded, critical, and eloquent citizen.
[00:11:33] Then came the Scientific Revolution, and with it, the university became a place not only for preserving existing knowledge but also for producing it.
[00:11:45] Now, this is an important distinction to make. For the first four to five centuries, universities were places for students to learn from the current corpus of knowledge; there was no focus whatsoever on discovery, of challenging accepted knowledge and research to uncover new ideas.
[00:12:08] Science, of course, is all about pushing human understanding forward, questioning why the world is how it is.
[00:12:18] If you were Galileo Galilei at the University of Padua, in Italy, this meant asking yourself whether the sun goes around the Earth or the Earth goes around the sun.
[00:12:29] If you were Sir Isaac Newton in Cambridge, in England, this meant asking what causes an apple to fall from the sky.
[00:12:38] It might sound obvious, especially now when a large chunk of a university lecturer’s time is supposed to be dedicated to research, but at the time, it wasn’t.
[00:12:50] And by the 18th and 19th centuries, universities were being reshaped again, pushing them even further towards what we see today.
[00:13:01] In Berlin, Wilhelm von Humboldt developed a new model: the idea that research and teaching should go hand in hand, that scholars should be free to pursue knowledge wherever it might lead.
[00:13:16] This so-called “Humboldtian” model spread quickly and influenced universities across Europe, and later the United States.
[00:13:25] It is, of course, the basis for much of modern higher education.
[00:13:31] Universities should educate young, curious minds, but they should also be centres of research and discovery.
[00:13:40] So, by this point, at the turn of the 20th century, there were something like 200 universities worldwide, depending on exactly what you classify as a university.
[00:13:52] The student body had also expanded, but there were still only around 500,000 university students worldwide, a tiny fraction of the estimated 250 million students today.
[00:14:08] University was still exclusive, expensive, and an option only for a tiny sliver of society.
[00:14:17] This all started to change in the post-war period, when governments across the developed world invested heavily in higher education.
[00:14:28] In the United States, the GI Bill gave returning soldiers the chance to go to college.
[00:14:34] In Europe, new universities opened their doors for a generation hungry for opportunity.
[00:14:41] And across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, universities were established as symbols of independence, progress, and modernity.
[00:14:52] For the first time in history, higher education was no longer the preserve of a tiny elite.
[00:15:00] And that brings us to the modern day.
[00:15:03] There is no single accepted figure for the number of universities worldwide, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 50,000, educating an estimated 250 million students.
[00:15:19] It is, for many professions, still an almost mandatory requirement, making university a necessary next step after school.
[00:15:30] In the UK, like most countries, getting a “good” job is significantly harder without a university degree, and the better the university you went to, and the better grades you got, the more likely you are to find a good job after graduation.
[00:15:48] There are plenty of counter-examples to this, of self-made millionaires who dropped out of school and carved their own path to success, but these are anomalies, in the UK at least.
[00:16:01] If you look through the CV or Wikipedia page of almost anyone who has achieved “career success” in some form of professional environment, you will almost certainly find the name of a reputable university on there.
[00:16:17] And in the UK, successive British governments have pushed to get as many young people into university as possible, proclaiming that the percentage of people graduating from university is a success metric. High = good, low = bad.
[00:16:35] In 1997, Tony Blair famously stated that he wanted 50% of British young people to go to university.
[00:16:45] At the time, it was seen as ambitious, almost utopian.
[00:16:50] It took 20 years, but in 2017, it happened. 50.2% of young people in the UK went on to higher education. And in fact, if you removed men from the equation, the target would have been hit much faster, as only 44% of men go on to higher education while 57% of women do.
[00:17:15] Now, 50% is significant, and moving above 50% means it’s something most people do.
[00:17:25] And if it is something that most people do, it has, by definition, become less valuable.
[00:17:32] And students are no longer studying the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, or at least, most aren’t.
[00:17:40] There has been a boom in vocational courses, courses that teach students practical skills and prepare them for a particular job or career: hospitality management, journalism, and so on.
[00:17:56] And the criticism of many of these courses is that, perhaps ironically, they don’t do a very good job at preparing students for the professional world. A degree in “golf management” might sound perfect for a 17-year-old fan of golf, but the reality is that it probably isn’t even the best course to study if they want to work in the golf industry.
[00:18:22] And alongside this, we must mention the cost.
[00:18:26] As you might remember from episode number 513, on the UK university crisis, the cost of university has expanded dramatically in the UK.
[00:18:38] Before 1997, it was free, and it has risen to almost €10,000 per year today.
[00:18:47] It is expensive, and that’s before you factor in the cost of living as a student.
[00:18:54] Indeed, according to a report that came out this summer, the average student in the UK graduates with £53,000 in debt, around €60,000.
[00:19:07] Interestingly enough, this is actually more than the average student in the US.
[00:19:13] The difference is that the cost of tuition in the US varies wildly, so the most expensive degrees at the most prestigious American universities can cost over $100,000 a year, while some universities can be completely free.
[00:19:30] In the UK, the best university can cost the same as the worst university, which leads to the situation that everyone has relatively equal high costs, but of course, not everyone graduates with degrees of equal value, which is something we’ll talk more about in the next episode.
[00:19:49] Now, to wrap up this exploration of higher education through time, I want to leave you with one last thought, and that’s about things that have and haven’t changed over the almost 1,000 years of the existence of university.
[00:20:07] One theme is the university student’s perpetual feeling of not having enough money. It’s understandable; students are, theoretically speaking, too busy studying to work, and with often hefty tuition fees to pay and rent to make, history is filled with examples of students complaining about being short on cash.
[00:20:30] Something that might have changed, however, is students' priorities about what they spend their money on.
[00:20:37] So I’ll leave you with a quote from one 15th-century Dutch student, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, or Erasmus of Rotterdam, as he is most commonly known.
[00:20:49] He famously said, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
[00:20:59] If Erasmus were a student today, I wonder whether he would still have the same priorities…
[00:21:06] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the history of universities.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new, at least something you might not have learned at university.
[00:21:18] As a reminder, this is part one of a three-part mini-series on the theme of “university”.
[00:21:24] Next up, in part two, we’ll be talking about universities in Britain: the different types of universities, the application process, university culture, and what life is like if you choose to study at a British university.
[00:21:37] And in part three, we’ll also be talking about something that called itself a university, but got into a lot of trouble for doing so: Trump University, and the scandal that followed.
[00:21:49] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:54] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s the start of our next three-part mini-series, this time on the theme of “university”.
[00:00:31] In part one, today’s episode, we’ll go on a whirlwind journey through the history of universities and higher education, from the Medieval period to the present day.
[00:00:42] In part two, we’ll zoom in and talk about universities in the UK, the different types of universities, what life is like at a British university, and I’ll share a load of my personal experience too, as I spent a total of five years studying at universities in the UK.
[00:01:02] And in part three, the final part, we’ll talk about something that said it was a university, but was later accused of being a complete fraud: Trump University.
[00:01:14] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:20] There are practically no institutions that have survived for 1,000 years.
[00:01:26] The Vatican City only goes back just over 700, the “ancient” city of Machu Picchu is not yet 600 years old, and even sandwiches have only been around for 250.
[00:01:40] Yet in just over 60 years’ time, one institution will celebrate its 1,000 year anniversary.
[00:01:50] The University of Bologna is, by some measures, the world’s oldest university. It was founded in the year 1088, some 937 years ago.
[00:02:05] If you go there today, the university doesn’t seem very old, or at least it doesn’t look so different from the rest of the city.
[00:02:15] But of course, 1,000 years ago, it was very different.
[00:02:20] It bore little resemblance to any modern university: no sprawling campus, no central library, no stone quadrangles where students wandered around in gowns.
[00:02:34] In fact, the “university” was more of an idea than a formal structure; it was really an informal gathering of young men who congregated in the same place and hired older, more learned men to instruct them.
[00:02:52] Now, before we get into how this worked in practice, and what they were studying, we should address the question of “why?”.
[00:03:03] Why then, and why there?
[00:03:05] Why do we see universities springing up in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries?
[00:03:13] Why in Europe in particular?
[00:03:16] Well, a few things were happening at once.
[00:03:20] Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries was finally becoming a little more stable.
[00:03:27] Populations were growing, towns were expanding, and trade was starting to flourish.
[00:03:34] In places like northern Italy, new city-states were booming with merchants, bankers and notaries. These were societies that needed contracts, charters, and legal expertise.
[00:03:50] At the same time, something extraordinary happened. Through contact with the Islamic world, in Spain, Sicily, and during the Crusades, European scholars rediscovered long-lost works of ancient philosophers, physicians, and thinkers.
[00:04:09] In Bologna, a copy of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, the great code of Roman law, re-emerged. This was alongside works of Aristotle, the great Greek physician Galen, and more.
[00:04:24] Suddenly, there was a sophisticated body of knowledge just waiting to be studied.
[00:04:32] The Catholic Church was also a huge factor.
[00:04:36] It was the single most powerful institution in Europe, owning vast amounts of land, collecting taxes, and even running its own courts.
[00:04:47] Historically, it had been where knowledge and learning was confined to.
[00:04:52] Monks were practically the only group in society that could read and write; books had to be meticulously copied by hand, by monks, of course, and these sources of knowledge were kept in monasteries, often under lock and key.
[00:05:10] But by this point, the church’s needs had evolved.
[00:05:15] To manage its sprawling empire it needed more than just monks who could pray and copy manuscripts. It needed educated clergy: men trained not only in theology but also in law, philosophy, and the practical business of administration.
[00:05:35] So, on the one hand you had these booming towns and ambitious rulers who wanted lawyers and administrators.
[00:05:44] On the other, you had the Church demanding skilled administrators and legal experts.
[00:05:50] And in the middle, you had rediscovered texts of Roman law and classical philosophy providing the material to study.
[00:05:58] It was a case of right time, right place.
[00:06:02] Now, importantly, these early universities weren’t “founded” in the sense we might think of today. It wasn’t the Church or a king who founded the University of Bologna.
[00:06:16] It was the students themselves.
[00:06:18] They banded together in guilds, pooled their money, and hired masters to teach them. This is what “universitas” originally meant, not “a university” as we think of today, but a corporation of students.
[00:06:36] And what gave these communities staying power, the ability to continue year after year, was recognition from the pope.
[00:06:48] Popes issued charters granting universities privileges, such as exemption from local taxes, the right to be tried in church courts, and most importantly, the authority for their degrees to be recognised across Christendom.
[00:07:04] In other words, someone could take their degree from the University of Bologna and show it to their master in Paris, and it would be recognised as valid.
[00:07:15] Now, in terms of what students would study at these universities, the curriculum was surprisingly uniform.
[00:07:25] A young man, and they were almost always men, would typically begin with what was known as the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
[00:07:36] In practical terms, this meant first mastering Latin, which was the language of the church.
[00:07:43] Then, mastering how to craft an argument and deliver a speech.
[00:07:48] And then it was logic: the art of reason, evaluating statements logically and systematically.
[00:07:56] It wasn’t so different from some of the skills that you might have learned at university.
[00:08:03] And once the young man had mastered those, he would move on to the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
[00:08:14] Together, these seven subjects made up the so-called “liberal arts,” which were the foundation of medieval higher education.
[00:08:25] After this, the most ambitious and wealthy students could progress to the higher faculties of law, medicine, and theology.
[00:08:34] And, not unlike the modern day, different universities excelled at different subjects.
[00:08:41] Law was especially important at Bologna, theology dominated in Paris, and medicine was strong in places like Salerno.
[00:08:51] Degrees could take years, even decades, to complete, and many students never finished, again, not so dissimilar to some modern universities.
[00:09:03] And by the 13th and 14th centuries, universities had appeared in Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, Padua, Prague, and Heidelberg.
[00:09:14] Wherever they were founded, they became magnets for ambitious men and symbols of prestige for the rulers who would often sponsor them, paying for their fees and living expenses, with the expectation that they would return and serve them after they graduated.
[00:09:32] A little like an employer today paying for someone to go and do an MBA.
[00:09:38] After all, for these young men, there was a clear incentive to go to university.
[00:09:45] Mastering Roman and canon law wasn’t just an intellectual exercise; it was a ticket to a career as a notary, a judge, or an adviser to a bishop or prince.
[00:09:58] In a society where almost all power was mediated through law or the Church, education became a pathway to influence, and one that was worth paying for.
[00:10:12] Now, although by the 14th century or so, universities were well-established, and there were around 50 scattered across Europe, they still only educated an extreme minority of the population, so we’re probably talking about fewer than 50,000 students at every university in total.
[00:10:36] And most graduates would become clergyman, priests, or some form of administrator within the church or a city state system.
[00:10:47] But as Europe moved into the Renaissance, universities began to change.
[00:10:54] Instead of focusing almost entirely on theology and law, a new movement of scholars known as humanists championed the studia humanitatis: the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
[00:11:11] These were subjects drawn from the classical world, inspired by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts.
[00:11:20] They shifted the focus away from purely preparing men for service in the church or the courtroom, and towards shaping a more rounded, critical, and eloquent citizen.
[00:11:33] Then came the Scientific Revolution, and with it, the university became a place not only for preserving existing knowledge but also for producing it.
[00:11:45] Now, this is an important distinction to make. For the first four to five centuries, universities were places for students to learn from the current corpus of knowledge; there was no focus whatsoever on discovery, of challenging accepted knowledge and research to uncover new ideas.
[00:12:08] Science, of course, is all about pushing human understanding forward, questioning why the world is how it is.
[00:12:18] If you were Galileo Galilei at the University of Padua, in Italy, this meant asking yourself whether the sun goes around the Earth or the Earth goes around the sun.
[00:12:29] If you were Sir Isaac Newton in Cambridge, in England, this meant asking what causes an apple to fall from the sky.
[00:12:38] It might sound obvious, especially now when a large chunk of a university lecturer’s time is supposed to be dedicated to research, but at the time, it wasn’t.
[00:12:50] And by the 18th and 19th centuries, universities were being reshaped again, pushing them even further towards what we see today.
[00:13:01] In Berlin, Wilhelm von Humboldt developed a new model: the idea that research and teaching should go hand in hand, that scholars should be free to pursue knowledge wherever it might lead.
[00:13:16] This so-called “Humboldtian” model spread quickly and influenced universities across Europe, and later the United States.
[00:13:25] It is, of course, the basis for much of modern higher education.
[00:13:31] Universities should educate young, curious minds, but they should also be centres of research and discovery.
[00:13:40] So, by this point, at the turn of the 20th century, there were something like 200 universities worldwide, depending on exactly what you classify as a university.
[00:13:52] The student body had also expanded, but there were still only around 500,000 university students worldwide, a tiny fraction of the estimated 250 million students today.
[00:14:08] University was still exclusive, expensive, and an option only for a tiny sliver of society.
[00:14:17] This all started to change in the post-war period, when governments across the developed world invested heavily in higher education.
[00:14:28] In the United States, the GI Bill gave returning soldiers the chance to go to college.
[00:14:34] In Europe, new universities opened their doors for a generation hungry for opportunity.
[00:14:41] And across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, universities were established as symbols of independence, progress, and modernity.
[00:14:52] For the first time in history, higher education was no longer the preserve of a tiny elite.
[00:15:00] And that brings us to the modern day.
[00:15:03] There is no single accepted figure for the number of universities worldwide, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 50,000, educating an estimated 250 million students.
[00:15:19] It is, for many professions, still an almost mandatory requirement, making university a necessary next step after school.
[00:15:30] In the UK, like most countries, getting a “good” job is significantly harder without a university degree, and the better the university you went to, and the better grades you got, the more likely you are to find a good job after graduation.
[00:15:48] There are plenty of counter-examples to this, of self-made millionaires who dropped out of school and carved their own path to success, but these are anomalies, in the UK at least.
[00:16:01] If you look through the CV or Wikipedia page of almost anyone who has achieved “career success” in some form of professional environment, you will almost certainly find the name of a reputable university on there.
[00:16:17] And in the UK, successive British governments have pushed to get as many young people into university as possible, proclaiming that the percentage of people graduating from university is a success metric. High = good, low = bad.
[00:16:35] In 1997, Tony Blair famously stated that he wanted 50% of British young people to go to university.
[00:16:45] At the time, it was seen as ambitious, almost utopian.
[00:16:50] It took 20 years, but in 2017, it happened. 50.2% of young people in the UK went on to higher education. And in fact, if you removed men from the equation, the target would have been hit much faster, as only 44% of men go on to higher education while 57% of women do.
[00:17:15] Now, 50% is significant, and moving above 50% means it’s something most people do.
[00:17:25] And if it is something that most people do, it has, by definition, become less valuable.
[00:17:32] And students are no longer studying the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, or at least, most aren’t.
[00:17:40] There has been a boom in vocational courses, courses that teach students practical skills and prepare them for a particular job or career: hospitality management, journalism, and so on.
[00:17:56] And the criticism of many of these courses is that, perhaps ironically, they don’t do a very good job at preparing students for the professional world. A degree in “golf management” might sound perfect for a 17-year-old fan of golf, but the reality is that it probably isn’t even the best course to study if they want to work in the golf industry.
[00:18:22] And alongside this, we must mention the cost.
[00:18:26] As you might remember from episode number 513, on the UK university crisis, the cost of university has expanded dramatically in the UK.
[00:18:38] Before 1997, it was free, and it has risen to almost €10,000 per year today.
[00:18:47] It is expensive, and that’s before you factor in the cost of living as a student.
[00:18:54] Indeed, according to a report that came out this summer, the average student in the UK graduates with £53,000 in debt, around €60,000.
[00:19:07] Interestingly enough, this is actually more than the average student in the US.
[00:19:13] The difference is that the cost of tuition in the US varies wildly, so the most expensive degrees at the most prestigious American universities can cost over $100,000 a year, while some universities can be completely free.
[00:19:30] In the UK, the best university can cost the same as the worst university, which leads to the situation that everyone has relatively equal high costs, but of course, not everyone graduates with degrees of equal value, which is something we’ll talk more about in the next episode.
[00:19:49] Now, to wrap up this exploration of higher education through time, I want to leave you with one last thought, and that’s about things that have and haven’t changed over the almost 1,000 years of the existence of university.
[00:20:07] One theme is the university student’s perpetual feeling of not having enough money. It’s understandable; students are, theoretically speaking, too busy studying to work, and with often hefty tuition fees to pay and rent to make, history is filled with examples of students complaining about being short on cash.
[00:20:30] Something that might have changed, however, is students' priorities about what they spend their money on.
[00:20:37] So I’ll leave you with a quote from one 15th-century Dutch student, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, or Erasmus of Rotterdam, as he is most commonly known.
[00:20:49] He famously said, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
[00:20:59] If Erasmus were a student today, I wonder whether he would still have the same priorities…
[00:21:06] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the history of universities.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new, at least something you might not have learned at university.
[00:21:18] As a reminder, this is part one of a three-part mini-series on the theme of “university”.
[00:21:24] Next up, in part two, we’ll be talking about universities in Britain: the different types of universities, the application process, university culture, and what life is like if you choose to study at a British university.
[00:21:37] And in part three, we’ll also be talking about something that called itself a university, but got into a lot of trouble for doing so: Trump University, and the scandal that followed.
[00:21:49] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:54] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s the start of our next three-part mini-series, this time on the theme of “university”.
[00:00:31] In part one, today’s episode, we’ll go on a whirlwind journey through the history of universities and higher education, from the Medieval period to the present day.
[00:00:42] In part two, we’ll zoom in and talk about universities in the UK, the different types of universities, what life is like at a British university, and I’ll share a load of my personal experience too, as I spent a total of five years studying at universities in the UK.
[00:01:02] And in part three, the final part, we’ll talk about something that said it was a university, but was later accused of being a complete fraud: Trump University.
[00:01:14] OK then, let's not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:20] There are practically no institutions that have survived for 1,000 years.
[00:01:26] The Vatican City only goes back just over 700, the “ancient” city of Machu Picchu is not yet 600 years old, and even sandwiches have only been around for 250.
[00:01:40] Yet in just over 60 years’ time, one institution will celebrate its 1,000 year anniversary.
[00:01:50] The University of Bologna is, by some measures, the world’s oldest university. It was founded in the year 1088, some 937 years ago.
[00:02:05] If you go there today, the university doesn’t seem very old, or at least it doesn’t look so different from the rest of the city.
[00:02:15] But of course, 1,000 years ago, it was very different.
[00:02:20] It bore little resemblance to any modern university: no sprawling campus, no central library, no stone quadrangles where students wandered around in gowns.
[00:02:34] In fact, the “university” was more of an idea than a formal structure; it was really an informal gathering of young men who congregated in the same place and hired older, more learned men to instruct them.
[00:02:52] Now, before we get into how this worked in practice, and what they were studying, we should address the question of “why?”.
[00:03:03] Why then, and why there?
[00:03:05] Why do we see universities springing up in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries?
[00:03:13] Why in Europe in particular?
[00:03:16] Well, a few things were happening at once.
[00:03:20] Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries was finally becoming a little more stable.
[00:03:27] Populations were growing, towns were expanding, and trade was starting to flourish.
[00:03:34] In places like northern Italy, new city-states were booming with merchants, bankers and notaries. These were societies that needed contracts, charters, and legal expertise.
[00:03:50] At the same time, something extraordinary happened. Through contact with the Islamic world, in Spain, Sicily, and during the Crusades, European scholars rediscovered long-lost works of ancient philosophers, physicians, and thinkers.
[00:04:09] In Bologna, a copy of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, the great code of Roman law, re-emerged. This was alongside works of Aristotle, the great Greek physician Galen, and more.
[00:04:24] Suddenly, there was a sophisticated body of knowledge just waiting to be studied.
[00:04:32] The Catholic Church was also a huge factor.
[00:04:36] It was the single most powerful institution in Europe, owning vast amounts of land, collecting taxes, and even running its own courts.
[00:04:47] Historically, it had been where knowledge and learning was confined to.
[00:04:52] Monks were practically the only group in society that could read and write; books had to be meticulously copied by hand, by monks, of course, and these sources of knowledge were kept in monasteries, often under lock and key.
[00:05:10] But by this point, the church’s needs had evolved.
[00:05:15] To manage its sprawling empire it needed more than just monks who could pray and copy manuscripts. It needed educated clergy: men trained not only in theology but also in law, philosophy, and the practical business of administration.
[00:05:35] So, on the one hand you had these booming towns and ambitious rulers who wanted lawyers and administrators.
[00:05:44] On the other, you had the Church demanding skilled administrators and legal experts.
[00:05:50] And in the middle, you had rediscovered texts of Roman law and classical philosophy providing the material to study.
[00:05:58] It was a case of right time, right place.
[00:06:02] Now, importantly, these early universities weren’t “founded” in the sense we might think of today. It wasn’t the Church or a king who founded the University of Bologna.
[00:06:16] It was the students themselves.
[00:06:18] They banded together in guilds, pooled their money, and hired masters to teach them. This is what “universitas” originally meant, not “a university” as we think of today, but a corporation of students.
[00:06:36] And what gave these communities staying power, the ability to continue year after year, was recognition from the pope.
[00:06:48] Popes issued charters granting universities privileges, such as exemption from local taxes, the right to be tried in church courts, and most importantly, the authority for their degrees to be recognised across Christendom.
[00:07:04] In other words, someone could take their degree from the University of Bologna and show it to their master in Paris, and it would be recognised as valid.
[00:07:15] Now, in terms of what students would study at these universities, the curriculum was surprisingly uniform.
[00:07:25] A young man, and they were almost always men, would typically begin with what was known as the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
[00:07:36] In practical terms, this meant first mastering Latin, which was the language of the church.
[00:07:43] Then, mastering how to craft an argument and deliver a speech.
[00:07:48] And then it was logic: the art of reason, evaluating statements logically and systematically.
[00:07:56] It wasn’t so different from some of the skills that you might have learned at university.
[00:08:03] And once the young man had mastered those, he would move on to the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
[00:08:14] Together, these seven subjects made up the so-called “liberal arts,” which were the foundation of medieval higher education.
[00:08:25] After this, the most ambitious and wealthy students could progress to the higher faculties of law, medicine, and theology.
[00:08:34] And, not unlike the modern day, different universities excelled at different subjects.
[00:08:41] Law was especially important at Bologna, theology dominated in Paris, and medicine was strong in places like Salerno.
[00:08:51] Degrees could take years, even decades, to complete, and many students never finished, again, not so dissimilar to some modern universities.
[00:09:03] And by the 13th and 14th centuries, universities had appeared in Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, Padua, Prague, and Heidelberg.
[00:09:14] Wherever they were founded, they became magnets for ambitious men and symbols of prestige for the rulers who would often sponsor them, paying for their fees and living expenses, with the expectation that they would return and serve them after they graduated.
[00:09:32] A little like an employer today paying for someone to go and do an MBA.
[00:09:38] After all, for these young men, there was a clear incentive to go to university.
[00:09:45] Mastering Roman and canon law wasn’t just an intellectual exercise; it was a ticket to a career as a notary, a judge, or an adviser to a bishop or prince.
[00:09:58] In a society where almost all power was mediated through law or the Church, education became a pathway to influence, and one that was worth paying for.
[00:10:12] Now, although by the 14th century or so, universities were well-established, and there were around 50 scattered across Europe, they still only educated an extreme minority of the population, so we’re probably talking about fewer than 50,000 students at every university in total.
[00:10:36] And most graduates would become clergyman, priests, or some form of administrator within the church or a city state system.
[00:10:47] But as Europe moved into the Renaissance, universities began to change.
[00:10:54] Instead of focusing almost entirely on theology and law, a new movement of scholars known as humanists championed the studia humanitatis: the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.
[00:11:11] These were subjects drawn from the classical world, inspired by the rediscovery of Greek and Roman texts.
[00:11:20] They shifted the focus away from purely preparing men for service in the church or the courtroom, and towards shaping a more rounded, critical, and eloquent citizen.
[00:11:33] Then came the Scientific Revolution, and with it, the university became a place not only for preserving existing knowledge but also for producing it.
[00:11:45] Now, this is an important distinction to make. For the first four to five centuries, universities were places for students to learn from the current corpus of knowledge; there was no focus whatsoever on discovery, of challenging accepted knowledge and research to uncover new ideas.
[00:12:08] Science, of course, is all about pushing human understanding forward, questioning why the world is how it is.
[00:12:18] If you were Galileo Galilei at the University of Padua, in Italy, this meant asking yourself whether the sun goes around the Earth or the Earth goes around the sun.
[00:12:29] If you were Sir Isaac Newton in Cambridge, in England, this meant asking what causes an apple to fall from the sky.
[00:12:38] It might sound obvious, especially now when a large chunk of a university lecturer’s time is supposed to be dedicated to research, but at the time, it wasn’t.
[00:12:50] And by the 18th and 19th centuries, universities were being reshaped again, pushing them even further towards what we see today.
[00:13:01] In Berlin, Wilhelm von Humboldt developed a new model: the idea that research and teaching should go hand in hand, that scholars should be free to pursue knowledge wherever it might lead.
[00:13:16] This so-called “Humboldtian” model spread quickly and influenced universities across Europe, and later the United States.
[00:13:25] It is, of course, the basis for much of modern higher education.
[00:13:31] Universities should educate young, curious minds, but they should also be centres of research and discovery.
[00:13:40] So, by this point, at the turn of the 20th century, there were something like 200 universities worldwide, depending on exactly what you classify as a university.
[00:13:52] The student body had also expanded, but there were still only around 500,000 university students worldwide, a tiny fraction of the estimated 250 million students today.
[00:14:08] University was still exclusive, expensive, and an option only for a tiny sliver of society.
[00:14:17] This all started to change in the post-war period, when governments across the developed world invested heavily in higher education.
[00:14:28] In the United States, the GI Bill gave returning soldiers the chance to go to college.
[00:14:34] In Europe, new universities opened their doors for a generation hungry for opportunity.
[00:14:41] And across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, universities were established as symbols of independence, progress, and modernity.
[00:14:52] For the first time in history, higher education was no longer the preserve of a tiny elite.
[00:15:00] And that brings us to the modern day.
[00:15:03] There is no single accepted figure for the number of universities worldwide, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 50,000, educating an estimated 250 million students.
[00:15:19] It is, for many professions, still an almost mandatory requirement, making university a necessary next step after school.
[00:15:30] In the UK, like most countries, getting a “good” job is significantly harder without a university degree, and the better the university you went to, and the better grades you got, the more likely you are to find a good job after graduation.
[00:15:48] There are plenty of counter-examples to this, of self-made millionaires who dropped out of school and carved their own path to success, but these are anomalies, in the UK at least.
[00:16:01] If you look through the CV or Wikipedia page of almost anyone who has achieved “career success” in some form of professional environment, you will almost certainly find the name of a reputable university on there.
[00:16:17] And in the UK, successive British governments have pushed to get as many young people into university as possible, proclaiming that the percentage of people graduating from university is a success metric. High = good, low = bad.
[00:16:35] In 1997, Tony Blair famously stated that he wanted 50% of British young people to go to university.
[00:16:45] At the time, it was seen as ambitious, almost utopian.
[00:16:50] It took 20 years, but in 2017, it happened. 50.2% of young people in the UK went on to higher education. And in fact, if you removed men from the equation, the target would have been hit much faster, as only 44% of men go on to higher education while 57% of women do.
[00:17:15] Now, 50% is significant, and moving above 50% means it’s something most people do.
[00:17:25] And if it is something that most people do, it has, by definition, become less valuable.
[00:17:32] And students are no longer studying the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic, or at least, most aren’t.
[00:17:40] There has been a boom in vocational courses, courses that teach students practical skills and prepare them for a particular job or career: hospitality management, journalism, and so on.
[00:17:56] And the criticism of many of these courses is that, perhaps ironically, they don’t do a very good job at preparing students for the professional world. A degree in “golf management” might sound perfect for a 17-year-old fan of golf, but the reality is that it probably isn’t even the best course to study if they want to work in the golf industry.
[00:18:22] And alongside this, we must mention the cost.
[00:18:26] As you might remember from episode number 513, on the UK university crisis, the cost of university has expanded dramatically in the UK.
[00:18:38] Before 1997, it was free, and it has risen to almost €10,000 per year today.
[00:18:47] It is expensive, and that’s before you factor in the cost of living as a student.
[00:18:54] Indeed, according to a report that came out this summer, the average student in the UK graduates with £53,000 in debt, around €60,000.
[00:19:07] Interestingly enough, this is actually more than the average student in the US.
[00:19:13] The difference is that the cost of tuition in the US varies wildly, so the most expensive degrees at the most prestigious American universities can cost over $100,000 a year, while some universities can be completely free.
[00:19:30] In the UK, the best university can cost the same as the worst university, which leads to the situation that everyone has relatively equal high costs, but of course, not everyone graduates with degrees of equal value, which is something we’ll talk more about in the next episode.
[00:19:49] Now, to wrap up this exploration of higher education through time, I want to leave you with one last thought, and that’s about things that have and haven’t changed over the almost 1,000 years of the existence of university.
[00:20:07] One theme is the university student’s perpetual feeling of not having enough money. It’s understandable; students are, theoretically speaking, too busy studying to work, and with often hefty tuition fees to pay and rent to make, history is filled with examples of students complaining about being short on cash.
[00:20:30] Something that might have changed, however, is students' priorities about what they spend their money on.
[00:20:37] So I’ll leave you with a quote from one 15th-century Dutch student, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, or Erasmus of Rotterdam, as he is most commonly known.
[00:20:49] He famously said, “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
[00:20:59] If Erasmus were a student today, I wonder whether he would still have the same priorities…
[00:21:06] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on the history of universities.
[00:21:11] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new, at least something you might not have learned at university.
[00:21:18] As a reminder, this is part one of a three-part mini-series on the theme of “university”.
[00:21:24] Next up, in part two, we’ll be talking about universities in Britain: the different types of universities, the application process, university culture, and what life is like if you choose to study at a British university.
[00:21:37] And in part three, we’ll also be talking about something that called itself a university, but got into a lot of trouble for doing so: Trump University, and the scandal that followed.
[00:21:49] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:21:54] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
