Medieval Universities - Get Your Learn On
College is a natural early step on the path to corporate life, both today and yesteryear. The university is a medieval invention, rising from humble beginnings to the soaring heights of its ivory towers today.
Before the year 1100, education mostly was for nobles and The Church. Monasteries had schools, cathedrals had schools, tutors would educate the children of the elite at court. Education was really informal, with teachers hired by people who had money whenever they wanted to teach young people.
A scholar might wander from town to town and set up shop by hanging out a sign and calling it a school, but there wasn’t a need to educate commoners, so very few got a formal education. With the rise of towns, there started to be demand for literate and numerate workers, and universities emerged to create a supply of potential employees.
Medieval education took students through the seven liberal arts. They got the name because learning these subjects “liberated” a person from a life of manual labor. First up was the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. This meant learning Latin and how to make a logical argument. Mastery of the trivium was the minimum requirement to get a job as a clerk.
For students who wanted further study, they would move on to the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. If you completed the full study of all seven, you could become a master, earning the right to teach what you had learned. If you wanted further instruction and certification, you could continue your studies to become a Doctor of Theology, Law, or Medicine.
You might guess that either law or medicine was the most prestigious, but in the Middle Ages, theology was the highest field of study. Universities began to spring up all over Europe after 1088. While students could study all the subjects at most universities, a few rose to the top in prominence. The top scholars would go to Salerno to study medicine, Bologna to study law, and Paris to study theology. Yes, there was a time when Oxford and Cambridge were safety schools.
Speaking of, there was trouble in the town of Oxford between the townsfolk and the students and teachers at the new university. So in 1209, according to the official Cambridge University website, “a group of scholars congregated at Cambridge for the purpose of study.” Yeah, the scholars in Oxford got the heck out of Dodge. Cambridge then allowed only scholars assigned to the supervision of a master to remain in the town to prevent future rowdiness.
What was the source of this discord? All students and teachers at a university had the legal status of the clergy, which gave them privileges and caused the original “town vs gown” frictions. Students would get rowdy, but the townspeople were forbidden to physically harm them. Groups of rowdy young men, living away from home and above the law… What could possibly go wrong?
Accounts survive showing that steam was let off during football matches, when monks and/or university students might be “accidentally” injured in the scrum. Their clerical status protected them in non-sporting occasions, but it also excluded women from formal university programs. Boo. Girls could still be educated by nuns at an abbey or by a tutor in a noble’s court, but they were shut out of the medieval university.
Students then were mostly the same as students now. Some students were studious; some partied big time. Peasants saved up to give their children a better life, spending huge sums to get them the education and certification they needed to advance in society. Students sent letters home begging their parents for cash, assuring the folks at home that they needed the funds for books, not barrels of ale.
image credit: National Lampoon's Animal House
So, what is college for? Is it for learning specific skills to get a job? Is it to prepare students for success in life more broadly? This idea was discussed then and is still debated today. Medieval universities grew as the need for their graduates grew, right along with the growth of towns and trade.
Many of the universities that developed in the Middle Ages continue to operate today. It’s pretty inspiring to imagine students sitting in the same spot hundreds of years earlier, pondering many of the same ideas you encounter in the classroom nowadays.
Today’s tablet and laptop are an improvement over the ink and parchment of the medieval era. Other changes like mountains of student debt and squabbling over royalties for name, image and likeness rights are more dubious innovations. Cheer for your college, but only the UTD Comets can claim an undefeated football team!
How does your company use formal education in hiring? Is it a way to screen out candidates? If they didn’t go to college, then they don’t make the cut. This might make sense. If you’re hiring an entry-level chemical engineer, they probably need to have a ChemEng degree, plus an internship or two.
But for entry-level marketing or sales or customer service or any number of operations roles, is it really necessary? Sure, a degree shows that the person can stick to a commitment and jump through the right hoops with dozens of professors. If they can do that for four years, it’s reasonable to believe that they can make it to the 8:00 AM Monday morning staff meeting, mostly un-hungover.
If you do choose to use a college degree as a filter, please don’t make the mistake of overlooking liberal arts grads. “How is this person’s study of Psychology or English going to help us hit our Q2 numbers?” That’s the wrong question. “Does this person have reading, writing, and critical thinking skills?” That’s what your company needs to succeed.
Their degree in Political Science or Poetry should have taught them how to read, write, and think, so dig in and find out if it did. If so, getting them to understand a balance sheet or customer acquisition costs should be a piece of cake.
Rather than just hiring for specific skills today, it’s a better long-term plan to hire someone who has shown they can learn new things so they can grow in their role at the company and beyond.
