Usually the university of Bologna is called the first university. What earns it this title though? How do the universities established during the early middle ages qualify as the first universities, but not, say, the Greek academies, or the Islamic madrassas, or any other earlier known place of higher education?
Thanks in advance.
Because "university" is not simply a word for higher education. When you think of a university, you also think of various specific features--award of hierarchical titles based on completion of programs, course structure, administrative connection of various different courses, fee structure, etc. This is now the dominant form of high education institution around the world, and it has its origin in the Medieval universities. Madrasses and the like are institutions of high education but they are not universities.
I always thought the oldest university was Islamic; the University of Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, established in 859. I don't know much about the University of Bologna, maybe it's merely the oldest in Europe?
But I think universities are distinct from earlier forms of schools because they don't solely exist as a place for scholars to study and live out their lives, they also award degrees to people who go on to work outside of the university, which is really what distinguishes it from a sort of intellectual monastery. Also the establishment of a basic standard of what an "educated" person has learned (we call them a bachelor of arts or whatever; in the middle ages they referred to it as the Trivium).
Also, technically, the plural of al-madrasah is al-madrasāt
Edit: Here's the Arabic: المدرسة \ المدارس
Edit 2: fixed the Arabic thanks to Pablo. Thanks, Arabic, for having broken and (somewhat) unpredictable plurals.