You should be able to connect if you have had them allow ports 80, 5190, 10000, and 11000 for TCP and 10000 and 11000 for UDP. If your university has opened these ports, then you may have a firewall on your computer that is preventing access. make sure you have set up your personal firewall to allow Launcher.exe and Matrix.exe (both in the Matrix Online game folder, which is usually C:\Program Files\Monolith Productions\The Matrix Online\) FULL access to the Internet.
Port Forwarding to cut off other users who need to receive information on those ports from getting that information. All incoming data on those ports would be forwarded to the IP address entered int he Port Forwarding rules instead of the computer which requested the information. The Port Forwarding/Port Triggering information is for home users with a router, for which forwarding ports would not pose an issue- most people don't need data from non-standard ports (that is, ports higher than 1023) and would not really be affected by forwarding. Port Triggering is a way of temporarily forwarding ports, to allow as little network disruption as possible. The information provided in the Port Forwarding/Port Triggering section you looked at is the easiest way for most home users to allow access to our games, with the least amount fo effort. Your university would very likely not use the same information, and should be able to simply open the game ports needed in their network firewall.
Double-check your personla firewall. If all those rules are set up properly, and your university has really opened the ports needed for the game, you may want to ask them if they can provide you with a proxy, or access to the DMZ (demilitarized zone, or a sub-set of the network which is blocked off from the rest of the internal network, but is not affected by any firewall rules).
