UNIVERSITY, a collective term applied to an as-
semblage of several colleges established in a city, where-
in are professors in the several sciences, appointed to
teach them to students, and where degrees or certifi-
cates of study in the divers faculties are taken up.
In each university four faculties are usually taught,
theology, medicine, law, and the arts and sciences.
They are called universities, or universal schools, by
reason the four faculties are supposed to take in the
whole compass of study.
Universities had their first rise in the XIIth and
XIIIth centuries. Those of Paris and Bologna pre-
tend to be the first that were set on foot; but they were
on a different footing from the universities among us.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge seem en-
titled to the greatest antiquity of any in the world; and
Balliol and Merton colleges in Oxford, and St Peter's
in Cambridge, all made colleges in the XIIIth cen-
tury, may be said to be the first regular endowments
of this kind in Europe.
The universities of Scotland are four, viz. those of
Vol. X,
St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. University-
See EDINBURGH, &c.