Modern university system

There are 90 universities in Great Britain today, compared with 47 in 1990, and only seventeen in 1945. They fall into five broad categories: the medieval English universities, the medieval Scottish ones, the nineteenth-century ‘redbrick’ ones, the previous polytechnics, and finally the twentieth-century ‘plate-glass’ universities. They are all private institutions, receiving direct grants from central government.

The beginning of the modern university system came with the grant of a charter to the University of London in 1836. It consisted then of two recently-founded colleges, and others were added at various later dates. Another university, at Durham in the north, was founded in 1832, but it remained small until quite recently. The University of Wales was established in 1893, with one constituent college in each of two big towns and two small ones. In the nineteenth century more universities were established to respond to the greatly increased demand for educated people as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the Britain’s overseas empire. Many of these were sited in the industrial centres, for example Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol. ‘Redbrick’ universities were built to provide a liberal education for poorer boys and to give technological training, while Oxford and Cambridge were more philosophical, classical and theological.

During the nineteenth century colleges which were founded in the biggest English towns began to prepare students for external degrees of the University of London. At various dates between 1900 and 1962 these university colleges were granted charters as full universities, with the right to confer degrees on their own account. During the 1960s they all expanded fast, and seven completely new universities were founded in addition, all of them establishing campuses on the edges of historic towns without much industry. Meanwhile, some of the local authorities’ technical colleges had developed their courses to a higher level, and eight of these were given their own charters in 1966-67. So within three years the number of universities in England doubled, to 32; and in Scotland too four new ones were added.

As distinct from the colleges and polytechnics, the universities have always been independent of both local authorities and state. Each has a council as its affective governing body (composed of professors, lecturers’ and students’ representatives and local notables) and a vice-chancellor (appointed by the council) as an academic chief. Each university has its own organization, but usually there are about six faculties, each containing a group of departments (for example a faculty of Arts for history, English, philosophy and languages).

Lecturers are appointed on the basis of their achievements in their first-degree examinations and postgraduate research. Their security of tenure in their jobs is being reduced. A lecturer who produces published research papers which are praised by the academic community may be promoted to the grade of reader. To be appointed to a professor’s chair it is usually necessary to move to another university. Success in obtaining grants of money for research projects helps towards promotion.

Apart from lecture courses the teaching is done mostly in laboratories or in tutorial groups for three or four students, or seminars for about ten. Students are required to write numerous essays or seminar papers, which maybe discussed in the group meetings. Some of these may be used for assessment towards the class of degree awarded. There are usually not more than twelve students for each teacher in a department, and there is plenty of personal contact between them.

Each university’s faculties issue prospectuses describing their courses. Anyone wanting to enter a university gets copies of several of these and an application form from the Universities’ Central Council for Admissions, on which to enter applications for up to five courses in different universities. Applicants then go to visit the universities to which they have applied, and may be interviewed by lecturers, who eventually decide which of the applicants to accept, mainly on the basis of the grades obtained in the advanced-level certificate examinations. Each course has a quota of new students which ought not to be exceeded, so entry to each course is in effect competitive. Perhaps as a result of this restricted entry, only about an eighth of students who start university courses fail to complete them.

One new venture was the founding of a new independent university at Buckingham, 40 kilometres from the Oxford. It is financed entirely by students’ fees and private contributions, and by 1983 it was solidly established. It then received a charter enabling it to grant its own degrees. By the 1988 there were 700 students. They can cover the work of a normal three-year course in two years by having no long summer vacation.

The great majority of students are in universities far from their homes; Bristol university has very few students who live near it, but many people who live in Bristol are at other universities. Each university has halls of residence with enough room for all or most of the first-year students, and in most cases for others too. For their last years of study most live in rented flats.

The preference for studying at universities away from home is probably linked with the old importance of the boarding public schools, and with the old pre-eminence of Oxford and Cambridge, which were for so long the only universities in the country.

In most universities students have their own ‘societies’ which are centres of cultural and recreation activity. There are political, religious, dramatic, sporting and many other societies. Sporting activities are as varied and numerous as the societies, and there is keen rivalry between the colleges.

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