University of Bologna: the world’s oldest university still one of its best

For the last decade, the QS Global Academy Advisory Board, through its QS World University Rankings, has helped millions of ambitious students choose the best university to become what they want and develop their future careers. 

 

The QS rankings focus on academic reputation, employer opinion, international staff and student attraction, as well as other measures of broad university performance.

3000 universities are considered of which only 800 get to be part of the ranking. These are only a small part of the many universities spread across the globe. 

 

It is fascinating to think how wide the academic world has become, and how many academics, scientists, researchers, and students are creating world wide knowledge and progress in many different fields. 

But let’s take a step back, and go to when it all started. 

 

The word “university” derives from the Latin “universitas” and it means “a whole”. In Latin it was also referred as “universitas magistrorum et scholarium”, which translated would roughly be “community of teachers and scholars”. 

 

An important aspect of the definition of a university is the concept of “academic freedom.” The interesting thing is that this notion has existed since the very early life of the first university: the University of Bologna. 

 

The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is not only the world’s first university; in 1158 the university decided to adopt an academic charter, the Constitutio Habita, which guaranteed the right of a travelling scholar to unhindered passage in the interests of education. For the time this was a revolutionary idea and today it’s claimed as the origin of “academic freedom” and widely recognized internationally through the Magna Charta Universitatum, a document signed by 430 rectors in 1988, marking the 900th anniversary of Bologna’s founding and the idea of a world where the freedom of knowledge has no boundaries.  

 

Bologna was the first of a long string of European universities.  In 1150 the University of Paris was born, followed by the University of Oxford in 1167. The University of Modena was established in 1175, the University of Palencia in 1208, then the University of Cambridge in 1209, the University of Salamanca in 1218, the University of Montpellier in 1220, the University of Padova in 1222, the University of Naples Federico II in 1224, and the University of Toulouse in 1229.

 

Before these universities existed, higher education in Europe would take place in Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools, where the faculty were monks and nuns. The earliest universities were developed under the aegis of the Latin Church, but later they were also founded by kings (like the University of Naples Federico II) or municipal administration. This is when knowledge started to split from a religious perspective and became more and more free.

 

Although, what is very interesting about the University of Bologna is that even when it was first established it had its own autonomy from kings, emperors or any kind of direct religious authority. The University of Bologna in fact began as a law school teaching the ius gentium, or Roman law of peoples, which was in demand across Europe for those defending the right of incipient nations against empire and church. A unique case for the time!

 

Nowadays the number of universities from all parts of the world signing the Magna Charta Universitatum continues to grow, and the world’s first university is still one of its best.  QS ranks Bologna in 182nd place among the 800 best universities in the world. Twenty five other Italian universities made it into the QS ranking of the top 800.  Together with the country’s artistic and historical riches, this makes deciding where to study in Italy a tough choice indeed.