EN
The purpose of this article is to describe the Imperial University of France from its formal establishment in 1806 to the early 1870s (i.e. the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune). The introduction points out the main reasons for the crisis in European university education, with particular emphasis on the situation in France. The post-Revolution reconstruction of secondary education is described and the initial stage of preparations and building foundations for future university education is analysed. Subsequently, the renewal of higher education is discussed. The basic ideological and political assumptions Napoleon Bonaparte employed to create the new university structure are presented and its central and territorial organizational basis is described. Since the Napoleonic University was first and foremost a corporate-organized, hierarchical administration of French education, a separate subchapter describes its internal structure, the main control authorities and the rules for their operation. Two penultimate parts, which precede the ending, are devoted to the proper higher education system: University’s academic faculties derived from ancient artes liberales and faculties bearing a more professional character – i.e. theology, medicine and law. The closing remarks include a summary of the above considerations and emphasize the incompleteness of the French higher education model as outlined above, which should be supplemented with an analysis of the operation of non-university teaching establishments.