Faculty (meaning)

You looked for faculty, and were directed here. (AWE also has articles distinguishing between facility and faculty, and on the meaning of facility, which you may want to see.)

In British educational institutions, a faculty tends to be a department or a group of related departments. For example, in a given school or college, the Science Faculty may contain Departments of Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Such groupings are often formed for convenience, and because the subjects are related by method, or by areas of interest. In the Middle Ages, universities had faculties to teach the main subjects through which they prepared students to enter the learned professions: Divinity (more usually called Theology nowadays), Medicine and Law. There was also a Faculty of Arts, which taught the basic university curriculum. This had to be studied successfully before a student could proceed to the higher faculties. There were seven subjects in The Arts Faculty (known as the liberal arts), divided into two groups. The trivium (Latin for 'three ways') contained three subjects, grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic). This was the curriculum which led to the B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) degree. The quadrivium ('four ways'), containing the subjects arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, led to the M.A. (Master of Arts). After these two degrees, and seven years of study, the student could proceed to a doctorate in his professional area - D.D. (Divinitatis Doctor, or Doctor of Divinity), M.D. (medicinae Doctor or Doctor of Medicine) Ll.D. (legum doctor, or Doctor of Law). Nowadays there is much variation in what a Faculty of Arts contains; and the same is true of Faculties of Humanities. In general, there have been great changes in the curriculum at universities, and the range of subjects taught would have been hard, if not impossible, for a mediaeval scholar to imagine.

• In the USA, the word faculty is used to mean what in Britain is usually called the 'academic staff': the full range of those who teach students, professors, lecturers and so on, along with those of similar standing whose duties lie mostly in research. You may risk misunderstandings if you talk about 'the faculty' in this American sense while working in British universities, where 'the faculty' is likely to be understood as meaning the administrative grouping in which you are working. This beginning to change: the American sense is increasingly to be heard in Britain. Doubtless this change will continue to be made more and more.
  • This meaning dates back to the 13th century, when faculty meant all those with superior degrees (Masters, Doctors) in a given 'Faculty', in the sense of Arts, Theology, Law, or Medicine, etc.
• In certain professions, Faculty is used to mean the whole body pf fully qualified practitioners - the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland is the equivalent of the Bar in English law, and until the twentieth century, the Faculty was commonly used for 'the medical profession'.
• There are several more everyday meanings of faculty, which originally was an 'ability', or an 'aptitude'. Two may be worth comment, for users of AWE:
• In slightly old-fashioned colloquial English, the term is used for the general abilities of the mind that are threatened by age, or mental ill-health. "She is 90, but she still has all her faculties" and "Sadly, he is losing his faculties" are examples. (This is an extension of the early meaning "one of the powers of the mind".)
• Faculty has a technical meaning in Law. It is the right (or 'ability') to do something a power given legally. It is now mostly used in ecclesiastical law, and has some technical applications in Scots law.