The first universities were founded in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In Scandinavia, the oldest extant universities can be found in Uppsala and Copenhagen — both universities opened in the late fifteenth century. My own institution, Lund University, was established in 1666 — following an earlier medieval academy in Lund, which was shuttered during the Reformation. (The Academy of Lund was connected to a Franciscan monastery.)
On one level, modern-day universities are a world apart from their medieval forebears. The numbers of the students and academics, and the range of courses and research on offer, are an order of magnitude greater today than in past centuries. But on another level, the mission of these institutions is fundamentally unchanged. The specialised skills communicated through higher education, as well as the knowledge and productive applications generated through research endeavours, are essential to understanding economic growth and humanity’s progress. Is it possible to trace the effects of the earliest universities on development?
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