Keio University

Keio University (慶應義塾大学, Keiō Gijuku Daigaku), abbreviated as Keio (慶應) or Keidai (慶大), is a Japanese university located in Minato, Tokyo. It is known as the oldest institute of higher education in Japan. It is also ranked as one of the top private universities in Japan. Founder Fukuzawa Yukichi originally established it as a school for Western studies in 1858 in Edo (now Tokyo). It has eleven campuses in Tokyo and Kanagawa. It has ten faculties: Letters, Economics, Law, Business and Commerce, Medicine, Science and Technology, Policy Management, Environment and Information Studies, Nursing and Medical Care, and Pharmacy.

Keio ranks 501-600th in Times Higher Education World University Ranking.

The university is one of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's thirteen "Global 30" Project universities. In the United States, Keio has a high school called "Keio Academy of New York".

Overview

Keio traces its history to 1858 when Fukuzawa Yukichi, who had studied the Western educational system at Brown University in the United States, started to teach Dutch while he was a guest of the Okudaira family. In 1868 he changed the name of the school to Keio Gijuku and devoted all his time to education. While Keiō's initial identity was that of a private school of Western studies, it expanded and established its first university faculty in 1890, and became known as a leading institute in Japanese higher education. It was the first Japanese university to reach its 150th anniversary, celebrating this anniversary in 2008.

University

A university (Latin: universitas, "a whole") is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which grants academic degrees in various subjects and typically provides undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

History

Definition

The original Latin word "universitas" refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc." At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialised "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.