universities. In the Middle Ages, the studium generale, a place of learning open to all, was the equivalent of the term ‘university’. Instruction was by learned men and degrees were awarded as a title of honour. From the 12th cent., Paris was the intellectual centre of this activity, where luminaries such as Peter Abelard (1079–1142) were both students and teachers.

Similar institutions were established in England, at Oxford about 1185 and at Cambridge in 1209. For the following six centuries, the two universities, which mainly provided a liberal education for the aristocracy and gentry, retained their exclusiveness. The attempts to establish a university at Durham during the Commonwealth foundered at the Restoration in 1660. Restrictions on non-Anglicans led to the founding of University College, London, in 1828 and the University of London eight years later, with its affiliated colleges and degree-granting powers. Scotland had a long tradition of university education which was available for dissenters. St Andrews (1410), Glasgow (1451), Aberdeen (1494), and Edinburgh (1583) attracted many English students.

Until the early 19th cent. there were no universities in the north of England. However, in 1832, the clergy of Durham cathedral decided to support a university based in the Norman castle, though restricted to students who subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles. The university, which received its charter in 1837, was based on the Oxford and Cambridge model. Most of its (male) graduates entered the church.

A new impetus for change and expansion in higher education came largely from the growth of science and its applications to an industrial society. One example of this was the setting up of a Royal Commission on Scientific Instruction and the Advancement of Science in 1872, chaired by the 7th duke of Devonshire. One of its main findings, published in 1875, was the need for more and better-trained science teachers, in which universities could help. Owens' College, Manchester, opened in 1851, had been a forerunner, though many of its students were part-time and did not aim at a degree.

Civic pride was also one of the prime motives for creating universities, which received benefactions from Jesse Boot at Nottingham, Mark Firth at Sheffield, and Josiah Mason at Birmingham, which also later attracted money from the American steel millionaire Andrew Carnegie. University colleges were set up at Southampton (1862), Newcastle (1871), Leeds (1874), Bristol (1876), Sheffield (1879), Birmingham (1880), Nottingham (1881), Liverpool (1881), Reading (1892), and Exeter (1895).

In the 1880s, one development was the northern federation of provincial colleges. Owens' College, Manchester, was joined by Liverpool in 1884 to form the federal University of Victoria, and by Leeds in 1887. Until then the students of these colleges had been prepared for external London degrees: under the new charter, the university awarded its own. The federation lasted until 1903, when individual charters were granted.

The University of Wales followed a similar pattern of an upsurge in civic awareness. Colleges were founded at Aberystwyth (1872), Cardiff (1883), and Bangor (1884). It was not until 1893 that a charter was granted to the University of Wales, giving the body degree-awarding rights in place of the London external degree. University College, Swansea, joined the federation in 1923.

The lack of opportunities for the higher education of women led to the founding of the university extension movement. Extramural classes had been held for women by professors at King's College, London, as early as 1847. In 1867 Josephine Butler and Anne Clough became president and secretary respectively of the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women. The success of the courses, which were very well attended, led Cambridge to establish university extension in 1873, sending lecturers to Nottingham, Derby, and Leicester. This was swiftly followed by the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching in 1876 and at Oxford in 1878. The newer civic universities were also soon heavily involved in the work, later developing departments of extramural studies. Women's colleges were instituted at Cambridge—Girton (1869) and Newnham (1871), with Anne Clough as principal—and at Oxford—Lady Margaret Hall (1879) and Somerville (1879), followed by others.

Whilst the University of London had grown into a teaching institution with 24 schools by 1900, subsequent university expansion was slight; in the inter-war period, only two new colleges outside London were founded, at Hull and at Leicester. Government funding was supplied to the universities and from 1919 was administered by the University Grants Committee (UGC).

After the Second World War, there was a great demand for more university places as the birth rate rose. The University College of North Staffordshire, now Keele University, was founded in 1949, and in the years 1961–5, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Lancaster, Sussex, Warwick, and York. Newcastle, previously linked with Durham, became a university in its own right. The Robbins Committee on Higher Education (1963) recommended that nine colleges of advanced technology (CAT) should become full universities, including Aston, Bath, Bradford, Loughborough, and Salford. At the same time Strathclyde, Dundee, and Heriot-Watt were founded in Scotland. Northern Ireland has Queen's, Belfast, a 19th-cent. foundation, and the University of Ulster at Coleraine.

Innovations in the structure of university organizations and curricula are a recent feature of the system. The Open University (1966) provides degree and other courses for students over 21, operates an open admissions policy, and uses distance learning. The University of Buckingham (1976) is the only independent university in the United Kingdom, offering two-year honours degree courses. A more informal organization is the University of the Third Age (U3A), which provides educational opportunities for the over-50s.

Following the recommendations of the White Paper ‘Higher Education: A New Framework’ (1991), the 1992 Education Act abolished the distinction between polytechnics and universities. There are now almost 100 universities whose finances are determined by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC), which replaced the UGC.

Peter Gordon

Bibliography

Cobban, A. B. , The Medieval Universities: Their Development and Organisation (1975);
Jones, D. R. , The Origins of Civil Universities (1988);
Sanderson, M. (ed.), The Universities in the Nineteenth Century (1975).