University Growth: Influence and Dispersion

Introduction

Higher education covers a broad range of higher learning institutions such as universities, polytechnics, colleges of education, and grandes école (Alemu, 2018) with differing missions, goals, functions, the requisite qualification of the faculty, the criteria for admission of students, the duration of programs they offer, and the type of certification they award (Assié-Lumumba, 2005). This list of institutional distinctions is critical to any consideration of university development and growth as history attests that higher learning institutions were first established in Asia, Africa, China, India, South America, and the Arab world prior to the development of the European university. However, the general perception is that universities are a European social innovation, as it is only in medieval Europe that a recognizable higher institution emerged (Perkin, 2007).

Despite the fact that, the ancient civilizations of China, India, South America, and South Asia have a long history of advanced education it is argued by historians that the Confucian schools for the Mandarin bureaucracy of imperial China, the Hindu gurukalas and Buddhist vihares for the priests and monks of medieval India, the madrasahs for the mullahs and Koranic judges of Islam, the Aztec and Inca temple schools for the priestly astronomers of pre-Columbian America and the Tokugawa han schools for Japanese samurai all taught externally directed and imposed curriculum content with little opportunity for question or debate (Perkin, 2007, p. 6). Nevertheless, these higher learning institutions, while not called “universities,” served their society as higher learning institutions (Alemu, 2018) (see Table 1).