After reviewing the literature on theories of influences on university students’ development and existing explanatory models, the authors propose a new theoretical model of “field-interaction” to interpret the various influences on university students’ development. The model shows that university students’ development is influenced by a range of fields including individual, family, media, and university, and by interaction between those fields, all of which affect students through their internalization of knowledge and actions. The model comprises four premises: 1. All factors can be integrated within the dimensions of “Individual-Organizational-Structural” and all have the characteristics of “time-space”. 2. The influence of these fields on university students’ development is dynamic, diverse and complicated, with positive versus negative effects, and rigid versus flexible effects. 3. To determine whether a factor has a decisive effect on a university student’s development, it is necessary to identify whether this factor is the student’s “Closest Other” or “Critical Other”. 4. The effects of factors and fields on university students’ development are subject to “time-delay”. From these four premises, the model concludes that the interaction of various factors produces growth for both individual students and the educational institutions they inhabit. The authors further advocate for recognition that universities are one among many fields influencing university students’ development and recommend actions on the basis of this holistic reality.