No, not this.
T H I S
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am finally revealing to you THE oldest university in the world. Now, I know that I was a bit elusive in my Oxford blog and since I gave the spotlight to number two already, it’s time to bring in number uno, the big guns. The University of Bologna (BOL-OG-NA)
(NOT BA-LO-NEY… please)
The University of Bologna was founded in 1088, beating out Oxford by approximately 8 years. It is located in a central location of Northern Italy, approximately equidistant from Venice and Florence, with Milan being a little over 100 miles away. It has four campuses in Italy, which are located in Ravenna, Forli, Cesena, and Rimini. The university also has a branch center located in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1).
Creation
The university had some rather tumultuous beginnings. The city of Bologna was a center of intellectual and cultural life. “Students came to Bologna from all over Europe to study with prominent scholars”. Instead of being affiliated with a university, professors individually taught students, offering whatever courses he desired and charging the student whatever amount of money that he desired. The influx of foreign students greatly increased the racial diversity of Bologna; however, this also caused great trouble for them as “aliens were subject to various sorts of legal disabilities”. Here is a situation depicting this- say Igor from Russia steals Giuseppe from Bologna’s money. Igor gets away with his crime and escapes back to his beloved Moscow, leaving Giuseppe in debt. Innocent Vladimir happened to watch the entire crime be executed and is confirmed as a witness. Poor Vladamir would be mandated by Bolognese law to pay Giuseppe back on behalf of Russians even though he is innocent. Foreign students, seeing this as unfair, decided to band together by nationality and establish groups known as “nations”. For example, there would be a Russian nation, English nation, French nation, etc. In case a member of one of the nations was unfairly targeted for a crime, the other members would help that member (like paying Giuseppe’s debts). The individuals thought it would be a wise idea to band together to form a stronger organization called a universitas. They did not form a university in the formal sense. Instead, it was more of a democratic assembly in which two members from each nation were appointed to the universitas council (3).
Universitas was determined to stand up to professors’ outrageous fees and classes, so it boycotted classes and refused to pay pays demanded by professors. Finally, the power over education lied in the hands of the students and not the professors. Universitas eventually began to hire and fire professors under their discretion, denoting the establishment of the University. Students fined professors if they didn’t begin/finish lectures on time or omitted course material. Professors were monitored by a scary-sounding group of individuals known as the Denouncers of Professors. However, the professors still retained the power by forming their own union, the College of Teachers. They won the rights to determine examination fees and degree requirements. During this time, the power laid in the hands of the students. The government decided that this wasn’t acceptable and started paying professors using public funds, thus turning the University of Bologna into a government-funded institution. The students lost their power to run the university and was transferred to the city government (3).
Notable People
Some of your favorite people attended the University of Bologna, which include Petrarch, Nicholas Copernicus, Popes Alexander VI, Innocent IX, Gregory XIII, Gregory XV, Laura Bassi (the first female to earn a university chair in the field of sciences, and Enzo Ferrari (founder of Scuderia Ferrari).
I talked a lot about the history of the university in this blog, but that’s because the university isn’t that prominent in modern society, currently ranking 188th in the world by QS rankings. However, the university is quite large, with 52,787 undergraduate students and 29,576 postgraduate students, with a total student population of 82,363 students(4). Comparatively, PSU’s University Park campus enrolls half of the entire student population of University of Bologna, but the number of students at all of PSU’s commonwealth campuses is roughly around 80,000 (5). Although the University of Bologna isn’t very prominent globally, it is still number one in the eyes of Italians.
- http://www.unibo.it/en/university/campuses-and-structures
- http://www.freenation.org/a/f13l3.html
- https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2018
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Bologna
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_University