Intellect PlusEducation
132 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 3 of 3.
Johns Hopkins chose to build scholars before buildings, and invented the American research universityWhen Daniel Coit Gilman became the first president of Johns Hopkins in 1876, he spent the endowment on recruiting brilliant faculty rather than raising grand halls, a policy parap…
War reparations from China paid for Japan's second university in KyotoIn the 1890s Japan had just one university, in Tokyo, and the government balked at funding another. Then Saionji Kinmochi, an aristocrat from an old Kyoto court family, proposed u…
The 'laurel berry' behind baccalaureate is a medieval pun, not the real rootIn the 12th century a bachelor was a knight too young or too poor to lead vassals under his own banner. Universities borrowed the word for junior members, and scholars later punne…
Robots in Yorkshire fetch books for the British Library's 200 million itemsThe British Library adds some three million items a year, needing nearly 10 kilometres of new shelving. Most of what it owns, about 70%, sits not in London but in Yorkshire, where…- 'College' first meant a legal club of colleagues, not a place to studyIn ancient Rome a collegium could be a guild of priests, a board of magistrates or a trade association: people chosen to act together. That is why surgeons, heralds, cardinals and…
Columbia began as King's College, then renamed itself to cheer the new republicFounded in 1754 by royal charter of George II, King's College shut for eight years during the Revolution while soldiers used its only building as a barracks and hospital. When it …
Every school teaches a hidden curriculum nobody wrote downBeyond the subjects on the timetable, pupils absorb lessons from how school is organised: who gets praised, how time is carved up, which friendships form. Philip W. Jackson named …
The PhD began as a German stand-in for the humble Master of ArtsMedieval doctorates required no original research at all, only long residence and exams. The research PhD was a 19th-century Prussian innovation: Berlin's philosophy faculty start…
Only about four in ten young children worldwide attend any early educationEconomists and the OECD rank high-quality preschool among the smartest investments a society can make, with benefits that dwarf the costs. Yet as of 2023 only around 40% of three …
Switzerland's 'Poly' could not award doctorates until 1909, yet trained EinsteinETH Zurich opened in 1855 as a federal polytechnic school, and locals still call it the Poly. It only gained the right to grant doctorates after reforms between 1905 and 1908. Tod…
A bachelor's degree is named after a knight's apprentice squireMedieval Latin used baccalaureus for a squire serving a knight, and universities borrowed it for students halfway to mastery. 'Graduate' comes from gradus, a step, because each de…
Cairo's Al-Azhar was founded as a Shia mosque and became a Sunni powerhouseIn 970 a Fatimid general began a mosque in the new city of Cairo, named in honour of Fatimah 'the luminous', daughter of the Prophet. It promoted Ismaili Shia teaching for two cen…