There were several major social and demographic changes that precipitated the development of formal universities in the 12th century. These include major advances in farming, the development of medieval towns, and the surge in translations of previously unavailable Greek, Roman and Islamic works.

ADVANCES IN FARMING

In the 11th century, European farmers developed the three-field system, where one field in rotation would always be left to lie fallow (unplanted), to allow the soil to replete itself with nutrients. Previously, fields had been planted on constantly, leading to reduced crop yields due to a lack of nutrients in the soil, which in turn resulted in food shortages. Additionally, the new mouldboard plough, allowed for easier cultivation of said fields. As a result, individuals farmers produced more food, surpluses increased, and this enabled more people to abandon farming to move to large population centers to practice their trades. Keep in mind that cities do not produce food - thus one could only live in them if there was enough supply from the farms. Even large farms also often massed around a walled, urban centers for protection against bandits.

DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNES

These demographic shifts towards urban population centers gravitated towards established churches, or sometimes ancient Roman towns that wer dilapidated but still standing. These cities required defense from attacks from bandits, resulting in the construction of city walls, and from abuses from local power magnates, resulting in the need for town charters such as this one. All of this is to say that the concentration of people in urban centers increased substantially, and the lives of the people within them became increasingly formalized.

THE CRUSADES

Military actions such as the Crusades, or the Reconquista, or even the Norman conquest of southern Italy, brought Christian Europeans face to face with Greek, Roman and Islamic scientific documents, prose, philosophy, codes of law etc. that had previously been lost in western Europe. The rush to translate them and access their knowledge was significant among Europe's many academics. Their contents revived discussions and practices in diverse fields such as law, philosophy and science.

UNIVERSITIES

Now, you can see the ingredients that created the foundation for the sudden development of universities in the 12th century. Education from traveling masters was common before the 12th century, because people largely lived in rural areas. As I continue the explanation of the founding of the earliest universities, here is an article from the University of Manitoba that you can read. Many, especially the rich, migrated to cities, where there was a need for young rich men to learn about the newest wave of developments in the legal, philosophical and scientific fields in order to become good citizens, and thus become acceptable in the upper echelons of society. Thus, the role of the traveling master became more localized in these cities. The earliest students would pool their money to hire a group of these masters to teach them in formal classrooms. As many of these students came from abroad to study with these masters (rather than wait for them to travel to their country), they feared reprisals against them as non-citizens, and thus petitioned both secular and religious leaders for autonomy in the form of formal recognition as an institution. This established their legal standing as a "universitas." This word in Latin means "whole, total," rather than anything relating to education, and thus represented their status as a separate legal body, resulting in the modern day usage of the word "university."

Was it that there were more founded or was it that they began to be more successful at lasting? Before those, were they often built with longevity in mind, or to meet local contemporary needs?