Early Development Of Medieval Universities In The UK

The British medieval universities have a very long history. The University of Oxford and Cambridge were born in the late middle Ages. As the most famous universities of both UK and the world, the British medieval universities have set a model of world-class universities. Although the two universities are similar in several parts, each has its own unique history. Two universities have jointly written a brilliant movement of Britain in medieval period. For a country which has such a long history and two world-class universities, the deep accumulation of birth and development is inseparable. Under what kind of social context and because of what kind of subjective and objective factors were British medieval universities founded? That’s a problem worthy of study.The birth of British medieval universities is closely related to the European medieval social development. Although the process of the higher educational development had its distinctive British model, but in fact, it is inseparable from religion, aristocracy institutional, economic life factors, and also the medieval universities of other European countries. The British medieval University was born in a Christian culture governed era of continental Western Europe, the papal forces throughout the various countries and regions. Various church groups involved in educational activities in the form of convent schools to spread the church ideology and culture to people. There have been intricate constraints between the universities and the churches. British aristocratic system is the special characteristics of feudal society of the Britain in the middle ages, reflecting a hierarchical class character, nobility and kingship dispute. It also affected the autonomy of the university, and it played a double role in the development of British medieval universities. The British medieval economic lifestyle change rapidly in a short period of hundreds of years, which made Britain, became a powerful country in the late middle ages. The variation from traditional agricultural economy to emerging handicraft, together with the commercial and industrial trade and economic changes in British society, brought a great deal of material resource base, and international influence to the country. The transformation of all these social factors had brought new opportunities for the development of British medieval universities.The most important point in the management of the British medieval universities is privilege. The privileges is the autonomy of the University as a corporate body empowered to deal with external relations, to oversee the hiring of members to develop their own constitution and jurisdiction to impose a certain degree of internal. Other privileges are shared by all the members of the university. These effects, together with the number of students, the intention of the founder or universities, their geographic environment and other factors led to the formation of the university organization and structure. British medieval universities had two-level management: university-level and hospital-level management. The university-level management is divided into internal and external management; each layer has its own unique organizational structure and special arrangements. The hospital-level management reflected a strong autonomy requirement, and strict articles of association of universities and colleges to be provided, reflect the British medieval university level and conservative.The development process of British medieval university is also the academic development and knowledge of the product and its institutionalized expression. Teaching activities of the British medieval universities had a close relationship with academic progress. On the one hand, it continued some traditional British ancient education and features; on the other hand, to a large extent, it reflected the academic activities features of the12th and13th centuries. From the11th century to the mid-12th century, the content of teaching in British medieval universities lined the content during the age of ancien. Greece, especially late Hellenistic Age and Roman education. The subjects were divided into the basically liberal arts and advanced medicine, theology and law. The teaching methods include lectures and debates.Teachers and students were the two main elements of the operation system of the university. Teaching activities is the interaction between teachers and students. Teaching activity would not carry on without each of the two elements. Teachers, students, and school funding constituted an important part of the internal management of the medieval universities. Scholars entertainment life during leisure time was bound by the British medieval universities’ tradition of conservative moral values and Christian trading ideas and was very tedious, of course, also reflected the effective implementation of the school management behavior and female underprivileged provokingly.All in all, standing on the height of reality, from the angle of the study of the early development of the British medieval universities, to summarize the perspective of history and context, to make a systematic study of the history of the two universities, is my guiding ideology. Based on previous studies, taking a step forward to explore new finishing and appropriately to do some basic work is the purpose of this paper. It will focus on analyzing the characteristics of the early development of the British medieval universities and their factors, so that we will make some contribution for scholars’future study.