CHAPTER I 
FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION 
Early Development 
The financial support of higher education in general during the 
early years of development cannot be identified separately from that of 
the church and religious Orders. Scholars would get together at a desig- 
nated meeting place, even on the Street at times, to discuss topics of 
scholastic importance. In the early part of the Middle Ages, the monas- 
teries became meeting places. Eventually the discussions were grouped 
under four heads: philosophy, medicine, theology, and law, and it was 
with this division of learning and the establishment of academies as 
meeting places for scholars that our present day higher education had its 
origin. The more formal beginning, however, was with the establishment 
of the University of Bologna in 1158, which later became famous for its 
courses in law. Universities had existed before this date, but Bologna 
was the first to which a university charter was granted. To Frederick 
Barbarossa is due the distinction of being the first person to establish a 
university in a formal way. He not only granted a charter to the Uni 
versity of Bologna but bestowed his protection upon it and conceded 
Privileges to it as well. 1 
The Spread of the University Idea 
During the next five hundred years similar institutions spread 
throughout Europe and the British Isles, and it is from this beginning 
that the present university and College Institution has developed. They 
were at first known as academies and in Germany a type known as “manual 
labor institutes” developed for the training of teachers. The idea of the 
“manual labor institute” spread to the United States as late as 1825-1840 
and was the nucleus of some of the institutions of higher learning which 
are still in existence in this country. Oberlin College at Oberlin, Ohio, 
started in this way. 1 2 
Motives in Higher Education 
At first education combined spiritual and secular training with the 
emphasis on the former. Hence religious Orders were closely involved 
and practically the entire financial support came from the church. Eittle 
1 F. P. Graves—“Evolution 0 f Our Universities”, School and Society, Vol. 8, pp. 691-702. 
2 Paul Monroe—History of Education, p. 723. 
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