The author describes, summarily, the birth of the universities in Europe. She emphasizes the Universities of Bologna and Paris because of their influence on the development of higher education, the first being the model for southern Europe and the second for the northern countries. She reports as in Bologna the students organized a corporation or universitas while in Paris, the professors, who were excluded from the students' universities, created their own corporation called Collegium Doctorem. Emphasis is also given to the Coimbra University, in Portugal.
The article gives an bird's - eye view of books which were used in those days and of student life in the Middle Ages.