In each university four faculties are usually taught, theology, medicine, law, and the arts and sciences.
They are called the 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 twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Those of Paris and Bologna pretend 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 entitled to greatest antiquity of any in the world; and Balliol and and Merton colleges in Oxford, and St. Peter.s in Cambridge, all made colleges in the thirteenth century, may be said to be the first regular endowments of this kind in Europe.
The universities of Scotland are four, viz. those of St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. See Edinburgh. Etc.