Definition of: university

(y′nə·vûr′sə·tē) noun plural ·ties
1. An educational institution for higher instruction or for the examination of students already instructed. Universities arose in Europe in the Middle Ages and were first essentially ecclesiastic. Their functions gradually became specialized, some dividing into several faculties, each of which took charge of some one great branch of instruction, or into colleges, as now in the older English universities, where the relation of the university to the college is similar to that of a federal government to its component states. In the United States the word has been used loosely, chiefly to mean a collection of educational associations including a college (which offers degrees in general subjects) and several more advanced and specialized faculties, either professional, as law, medicine, etc., or academic, as history or mathematics.
2. All the students of such an institution.
3. Brit. Colloq. A university team or crew.