In those days l'universite meant merely a collection of people ' students who met on a street corner, or in a public square or courtyard, to hear a teacher lecture from a bench, or from an upstairs window or balcony.
L'universite used to just mean a gathering of students.
Grown in India, it was delivered to Canton, and while China outlawed the trade in 1799, local Cantonese officials were always willing to look the other way for  squeeze money  (a term still used in Hong Kong).