There is no command line access for the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. But the free and most excellent CoRD remote desktop client does handle rdp:// links which would let you call it from a launcher of your choice or even via open on the command line.
CoRD handles rdp:// URLs, which you can use from many places inside OS X. Unfortunately, there is no way to extend Finder's "Connect to Server" dialog, which supports launching VNC URLs, so we can't launch CoRD from there. If Apple changes this (or if anybody is aware of a way to extend it) we would love to hear about it.
Saved Servers
If you want to use rdp:// urls with existing saved servers, you can (as of 0.5.3)! Just use the label in place of a hostname:
open rdp://label
New Servers
From a shell (using Terminal):
open rdp://hostname
Additional parameters can be used to start a fully-configured session via the URL:
open rdp://[username[:password]@]hostname[:port][/domain][?parameters]
The following parameters can be set for the session via a query string (as of 0.5.2):
screenDepth ### [8|16|24|32]screenWidth <width in pixels>screenHeight <height in pixels>consoleSession ### [true|false|yes|no]fullscreen ### [true|false|yes|no]windowDrags ### [true|false|yes|no]drawDesktop ### [true|false|yes|no]windowAnimation ### [true|false|yes|no]themes ### [true|false|yes|no]fontSmoothing ### [true|false|yes|no]forwardDisks ### [true|false|yes|no]forwardPrinters ### [true|false|yes|no]forwardAudio ### [0|1|2]
0 - Forward Audio to the Local Machine (Currently not used since CoRD doesn't present audio)1 - Leave Audio at the Remote Machine2 - Disable Audio at both Machines
Example
open rdp://jsmith:securePassword@hostname.bigco.com/BigCoDomain?screendepth###24\&consoleSession###true\&themes###false\&screenWidth###1280\&screenHeight###800
Note:
When using ampersands (&) from the command line, they have to be escaped with a backslash (). Colons (:) can be used in place of ampersands for the same effect, without needing to be escaped.
Passwords with any special characters in them, @, :, &, etc need to be encoded according to the URL Encoding Format
Command Line Use
CoRD supports the following command line options: -host -port -u -d -p -a [8|16|24|32] set screen depth -width set screen resolution width -height set screen resolution height
Example
/Applications/CoRD.app/Contents/MacOS/CoRD -host example.com -port 3389 -u username
Caveats
Launching CoRD from the command line this way causes a fresh instance of CoRD to be opened. One symptom of this is multiple Dock icons. This overrides or decreases the effectiveness of many of CoRD strong points, including unified sessions, etc. For that reason, we recommend using the open command, and rdp:// URLs to launch sessions.
Best Answer
There are a couple of ways to approach this. One is via use of the University's VPN, which would put you right on their network and keep your IT department from having to do anything besides allow you to log into their network via the VPN. This would be my preference as it is common, secure and puts your home Mac right on the same network with your Mac at university.
But you don't mention that there was a VPN involved, so...
Take those port numbers and the IP address of your Mac at the university and your Mac at home and talk to someone in the IT department.
What they will do (if they allow this) is forward your home IP address to your work IP address via those two port numbers. It is all done by your IT department. When they are done with this they should give you an IP address to connect to from home. This IP address will, in effect, be your Mac at University. You would plug that into Apple Remote Desktop at home and it should (if everyone has done their jobs right) connect you from home to your University Mac.
Note that your University IT department might recoil in horror at what you are suggesting (I would, we don't do this where I work) as it could be a security risk. So your best bet is to see if they have a VPN that you can use.
We can help you with that too, but that would be a different question, separate from this.