The Idea of University – Historical realisations and threats of disappearing
The Idea of University – Historical realisations and threats of disappearing

Summary/Abstract: After so much time, we are still facing ambiguities concerning the origin, formation and development of the idea of university and, especially, concerning its originating period in the Medieval Ages. What is certain is that the idea and reality of university is not result of the efforts of a single civilization and a historical epoch. Accordingly, the author argues that the idea of higher education and its first rudimentary forms had not originated from the West, but from the East, from the ancient India and China, as well as from the ancient Greece and the early Byzantium.The paper poses arguments for the stance that the idea of higher education that delivered the Medieval University and its first historical forms belongs to Muslim mind. Later on, it would contribute to emergence of the Medieval Western European model of university and partly would intercede its concrete realizations. In the following parts, the author develops discourse about the origins of the Medieval model of university and its fullest institutional formation in the 13th century; it deals with threats to the idea of university presented during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The last idea of university was developed by I. Kant. His idea, along with the classicist idea of education, would enable Humboldt to develop the overall concept of university that was brought to reality by establishing the Humboldt University of Berlin. In the final part, the paper treats the Bologna reform of Higher Education, crisis of university and disappearing of the idea of university, its acquiescence to the political and economic principles and the logics of the market.

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