University of Salamanca

In honor of classes starting tomorrow, I decided to write a little something about the University of Salamanca (USal).

USal was founded in 1218 by Alfonso IX, the king of León. It is the oldest Spanish university still in existence, and one of the oldest universities in the world. Back in the day, like the 1500´s, it was considered the best university in the world. That was when people like Cervantes were studying there. USal is still referred to as the Oxford of the Spanish world.

Currently, the university has some 40,000 students (both graduate and undergraduate) in 16 facultades. Each facultad is like its own autonomous college with departments within it, and students apply to and enroll in an individual facultad. Additionally, each facultad has its own buildings, library and holidays. This system is partially why students are so specialized as soon as they enter the university, although high schools are also specialized (there are high schools with a humanities or science emphasis, etc.). Very few students change majors, because they have to start back at the beginning with their classes because there aren´t really any shared gen. eds, and fewer change facultades, because they have to re-apply to a different facultad.

I´m in Cursos Internacionales, which is a quasi facultad. Cursos Internacionales doesn´t offer many classes and doesn´t have their own faculty, but they are in charge of making sure that all of us non-native speakers of Spanish know what we´re doing (they also make sure all non-EU citizens get all of the proper permission to be here). One of the main benefits of being in Cursos Internacionales is that I can take classes at any facultad, as long as I can find their course catalog, which is not as easy as it sounds (the facultad of medicine is really good at hiding their course catalog), and I get library privileges at all of the facultad libraries (the amount of access that I have to the library is up to each individual facultad, though. In some, I can´t check out books, and in others I can´t use library materials in the library).

That´s my current university home. I´m sure I´ll have more to add about USal as I get to know it better.