3. Graduation—

Taking a university degree—graduation—meant originally the act of being received as a member of the university, i.e. of the incorporated body, guild, or union of academic teachers (doctores, projessores, mayistri). The tei in university is derived from universitas, which meant in Roman law any kind of corporation. In the original sense, therefore, a joint-stock company, or the city of Wellington, or the Bank of New Zealand is as much entitled to be called a university as the University of Oxford is. For many a day, however, the term has been limited to one particular kind of corporation, namely the corporate union of the academic teachers and graduates of a certain place. When, in the Middle Ages, professors, graduates, or students spoke of the university, they naturally meant the university (i.e. corporation) to which they themselves belonged. So in modern times when the citizens of a town speak of the corporation, they mean the corporation of which they themselves are members, namely the municipal corporation of their own town. Just as the term corporation is tending to become limited to municipal corporations, so the term university has become limited to academic corporations. A. similar process of specification, though not so complete, has affected the related term college. Collegium in Latin is any body corporate; college in English means commonly a teaching page 11 institution, though not necessarily or commonly of university rank. So naturally, indeed, does the word college now suggest a boys' or girls' school, that it is a matter of regret that Victoria College suffered at its birth or baptism the misfortune of so misleading and unworthy a title. Even Victoria University College would have been a great improvement, while the University of Wellington would have been a choice justified by the example of the University of Otago and also as a premonition of the future.

A University, then, was originally a voluntary union or guild of masters, doctors, or professors engaged in academic teaching in some city such as Paris, Bologna, or Oxford. It was a self-governing body with the power of admitting new members and authorising them to take part in its academic work. This admission into the universitas—into the teacher's guild—of a new master or doctor was graduation, the taking of a degree. Afterwards, however, when the distinction arose between doctores legentes and doctores non-legentes—between professors and graduates—graduation necessarily assumed a new meaning. It became what it is now, namely the public and authoritative recognition of expert qualification in some branch of knowledge.