culture fix

European universities evolved from the guild system. The guild system co-evolved with systems of money and urbanization. As cities evolved and people moved from barter to coin, so did guilds, considered to be the juxtaposed precursor to both labor unions and capitalization. Indeed, universitas itself means corporation.

However, the University of Paris, founded in 1100, was founded by an entirely different guild than the guild of students who formed the cooperative learning institution in Bologna. Teachers at Paris were paid by the Church (followed soon by universities supported by the State), so their customers were not the students, but were instead the Pope. By the end of the twelfth century, there were nearly a hundred universities spread throughout Europe, chartered, funded, and overseen, of course, by higher powers than the students they claimed to serve. Aided by lawyers and kings in the service of the owning class, fearful of the up-and-coming merchant class, these higher institutes of learning became the gatekeepers of professionalism we know today. And of course, this spelled the doom of the guild of students.