Afaculty oracademic division is an academic and administrative unit within auniversity orcollege comprising one subject area or a group of related subject areas, possibly also delimited by level (e.g. undergraduate).[1] In North America, academic divisions are sometimes titled colleges, schools, or departments, with universities occasionally using a mixture of terminology, e.g., Harvard University has aFaculty of Arts and Sciences and aLaw School.
The medievalUniversity of Bologna, which served as a model for most of the later medieval universities in Europe, had four faculties: students began at the Faculty of Arts, graduates from which could then continue at the higher Faculties ofTheology,Law, andMedicine. The privilege to establish these four faculties was usually part of medieval universities' charters, but not every university could do so in practice.
TheFaculty of Arts took its name from the sevenliberal arts: thetrivium[Notes 1] (grammar,rhetoric,dialectics) and thequadrivium[Notes 2] (arithmetic,music,geometry andastronomy). In German, Scandinavian, Slavic and related universities, it would more often be called theFaculty of Philosophy.[Notes 3] The degree ofMagister Artium (Master of Arts) derives its name from the Faculty of Arts, while the degree ofDoctor Philosophiae (Doctor of Philosophy) derives its name from the Faculty of Philosophy, German name of the same faculty. Whether calledFaculty of Arts orFaculty of Philosophy, it taught a range of subjects with general and fundamental applicability.
The higherFaculty of Law andFaculty of Medicine were intended, much like today, for specialized education required for professions. TheFaculty of Theology was the most prestigious, as well as least common in the first 500 years—and generally one that popes sought most to control. Although also a professional education for clergy, theology (until the Enlightenment) was also seen as the ultimate subject at universities, named "The Queen of the Sciences", and often set the example for the other faculties.
The number of faculties has usually multiplied in modern universities, both through subdivisions of the traditional four faculties and through the absorption of academic disciplines that developed within originally vocational schools, in areas such as engineering or agriculture.
AFaculty of Arts is a university division teaching in areas traditionally classified as "liberal arts" for academic purposes (fromLatinliberalis, "worthy of a free person", andars, "art or principled practice"), generally includingcreative arts,writing,philosophy, andhumanities.
In English-speaking academia,Faculty of Music normally refers to a university department, especially at Oxford and Cambridge (UK). In the US, the use of 'faculty' often relates to academic and teaching staff.
^Charles William Eliot, Association of American Universities, "Discussion of the Actual and the Proper Line of Distinction Between College and University",Journal of proceedings and Addresses of the First and Second annual conferences, Volumes 1–12 (1901), p. 38.
