university

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees.
2. n. The buildings and grounds of such an institution.
3. n. The body of students and faculty of such an institution.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The whole; the universe.
2. n. A corporation; a gild.
3. n. An association of men for the purpose of study, which confers degrees which are acknowledged as valid throughout Christendom, is endowed, and is privileged by the state in order that the people may receive intellectual guidance, and that the theoretical problems which present themselves in the development of civilization may be resolved. The earliest university was the medical school of Salerno, which was closed in 1817, after a life of about a thousand years. The two models of all the other old universities were those of Bologna and Paris, the former a law school, the latter making theology its chief concern, both founded in the second half of the twelfth century—an epoch at which the advantages that were to accrue to the world from certain studies were strongly felt. The university of Paris had from the outset four faculties, or branches of study (a word also applied to the associate body of teachers in each branch)—theology, canon law, medicine, and arts. But the study of arts—including logic and rhetoric from the trivium, and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy)—was regarded as merely preliminary to the others, which alone, as attacking vital problems, entitled the university to its high privileges. Hence, upon inception as a master of arts a man did not cease to be called a “scholar”—a word which has consequently come to imply sound learning outside the three professions. It was the elucidation of theology which was above all desired and expected from the university; and the faculty of theology was organized more like a learned academy than as a seminary. The constitutions of universities are various and for the most part complicated. In Paris there were in each faculty three degrees, those of bachelor, licentiate, and master or doctor. Three years' study were required for a master in arts, and he must be twenty-one years of age. Five years' study more were required for the first degree in theology. The instruction was entirely by lectures, and the only exercises were disputations. Each faculty was presided over by a dean, and had two bedels and other servants. The four faculties met in congregation, and were presided over by the vice-chancellor. The position of chancellor was merely formal. For the purposes of administration, all the scholars, including the masters of arts, were divided into four nations, of Gaul, Picardy, Normandy, and England. This was an arrangement not going back to the origin of the university, though students from the same country had from the first clubbed together. Each nation was governed by a proctor, and possessed a seal. The students were mostly gathered into different colleges, hostels, and pedagogies; and in 1459 the class of martinets, or unattached students, was abolished. The corporate institution in Paris and other northern universities embraced only the masters, not the other students, and for this reason it was not until late in the fourteenth century that, first in Germany, this body, called the studium generale, began to take the name of the universitas, or union—a word which had before and has since been used to include students of all grades. Along with the name of university, from before the restriction in its meaning, has always been associated the epithet of alma mater.

Wiktionary

1. n. Institution of higher education (typically accepting students from the age of about 17 or 18, depending on country, but in some exceptional cases able to take younger students) where subjects are studied and researched in depth and degrees are offered.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. obsolete The universe; the whole.
2. n. obsolete An association, society, guild, or corporation, esp. one capable of having and acquiring property.
3. n. An institution organized and incorporated for the purpose of imparting instruction, examining students, and otherwise promoting education in the higher branches of literature, science, art, etc., empowered to confer degrees in the several arts and faculties, as in theology, law, medicine, music, etc. A university may exist without having any college connected with it, or it may consist of but one college, or it may comprise an assemblage of colleges established in any place, with professors for instructing students in the sciences and other branches of learning. In modern usage, a university is expected to have both an undergraduate division, granting bachelor's degrees, and a graduate division, granting master's or doctoral degrees, but there are some exceptions. In addition, a modern university typically also supports research by its faculty.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the body of faculty and students at a university
2. n. establishment where a seat of higher learning is housed, including administrative and living quarters as well as facilities for research and teaching
3. n. a large and diverse institution of higher learning created to educate for life and for a profession and to grant degrees