Arabella asked:

What is a University?

and Gina asked:

We are writing an essay of 3500 words on the topic, What is a University? For example, when
Stellenbosch University became a university, it changed from a college to a university. I have to get
one big question, but I can't only find one. My idea is: to build it around the student and from there to
the knowledge and spirit.

"The true character of a university is the 'will to knowledge'. It is a collection of students who possess
the will to knowledge — the will to possess it and still more the will to advance it. A university is
constituted by its students, and by this alone." — Shand.

"A university is not a lecture-theatre, or a library, or a laboratory, it is not a building or a place at all, its
essence is a frame of mind." — Shand.

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Webster defines universities as institutions of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and
research and authorized to grant academic degrees; A university differs from a college in that it is
usually larger, has a broader curriculum, and offers graduate and professional degrees in addition to
undergraduate degrees. The term also refers to the members of this collectively and a team, crew,
etc., representing a university. Modern Western universities have their beginnings in the 12th century
with the foundation of universities such as Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, and the oldest still-functioning
university, Bologna. They were called universitas magistrorum et scholarium". Here the word
"universitas" identified the fact that this institution of masters (magistrorum or professors) and
scholars (scholarium or students) was a company of persons, a community, a body, like all other
medieval guilds, organized for the sake of its protection from hostile outsiders. The university, from its
origins, was not only a center of discussion, but also of critique. It considered issues as objectively as
it could, and thus often disapproved, implicitly or explicitly, of policies endorsed by the State and the
Church. In an era of authoritarian control by both secular and ecclesiastical authority, this trait surely
needed protection.

Another aspect of university was that of a Studia Generalia, or "School of Universal Learning."
According to its Website, this is quite the mission of the University of Stellenbosch: to create and
sustain, in commitment to the academic ideal of excellent scholarly and scientific practice, an
environment within which knowledge can be discovered, can be shared, and can be applied to the
benefit of the community".

From these ancient beginnings, modern universities developed and in the nineteenth century the
number of universities expanded considerably. The German model of university education with its
emphasis on higher degrees (doctorates) has been influential particularly in America, and now
universities focus on research as much as teaching.

University education focuses on theoretical analysis and concept-forming, rather than technical skills
or development of techniques.

The typical modern university may enroll 10,000 or more students and educate both undergraduates
and graduate students in the entire range of the arts and humanities, mathematics, the social
sciences, the physical, biological, and earth sciences, and various fields of technology. Universities
are the main source of graduate-level training in such fields as medicine, law, business
administration, and veterinary medicine.

If you want to built your essay more around the student, following passage taken from Robert M.
Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, might be worth thinking about:

""The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and
receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational
thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any
specific location. It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of
people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University.
The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself. In addition to this state of
mind, `reason,' there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite
another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns
property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures
in the process. But this second university, the legal corporation, can not teach, does not generate
new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the
setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.""

Simone Klein