What were the strengths and weaknesses of higher education during the Middle Ages?

Answer 1

1st AnswerThere wasn't higher education in this time. 90% of the population did not read or write. Only the clergy could and they wrote books as well as kept them. 2nd AnswerThe University of Bologna, opened in 1088, and was the first of almost sixty that opened before 1453. Medieval higher education evolved at an earlier date, however, as competing teachers congregated in cities such as Paris, which were known educational centers. The earliest universities developed when the teachers combined together in guild-like organizations designed to regulate education.

The education of the early universities was in the liberal arts, of which there were precisely seven. These were grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. The first four years to six years of university education, leading to a bachelor's degree, were in the liberal arts. Additional studies included law, medicine, and theology, and these lead to master's and doctor's degrees, over a period of up to twelve years. Clearly, a weakness of the universities of the time was that education was limited, and another was that it was lengthy.

Many of the universities were private organizations, however, and though they were subject to the Church's authority, they were no more so than anyone else was. This meant that the universities were much freer that monastic schools both in what they taught and in how they taught it. It also meant that the universities were rather free to evolve.

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