University of London
London, University of, institution of higher education in London, and the largest federal university in the United Kingdom. It is a confederation that includes 19 separately incorporated colleges, which vary markedly in subject spread and in size, as well as several specialist institutions. The university was established by royal charter in 1836. Most of its constituent colleges are located in central London.
Academic Organization
The University of London is (with the exception of the Open University) the largest university in the United Kingdom, equating to 14 per cent of the higher education sector. It has 82,500 internal students (53,000 undergraduates and 29,500 postgraduates), plus 24,500 external students, and its constituent colleges employ about 30,000 staff.
The teaching and research is carried out in the colleges and institutes, which are responsible for their own academic organization but all of which award degrees of the University of London. In addition to the separately incorporated colleges there are a number of central institutes that are not separately incorporated and are legally and constitutionally part of the University of London. These include research institutes that fulfill national roles. Some specialist institutions are designated Associate Institutions, a status that allows their students to be registered to proceed to degrees of the university. The university also permits students who are not internal students at one of its colleges or institutes to register for University of London examinations through its External Programme.
The university covers almost every discipline at one or other of its institutions and has a special commitment to medical education and research, providing more than a quarter of the United Kingdom’s medical and dental graduates. Of the 16 Nobel laureates spawned by the university half have been in the field of medicine and include Sir Alexander Fleming.
The formal head of the university is the Chancellor, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, who was appointed in 1981. The university is governed by a council, upon which sit the heads of every college, student representatives, lay members, academic subject specialists, and representatives of the graduate body, Convocation. The council is presided over by the Pro-Chancellor. The executive head of the university is the Vice-Chancellor, who is elected from among the heads of colleges to this office concurrently with the duties associated with his or her own college. The heads of colleges are known by various titles: the Provost of University College, Rector of Imperial, Warden of Goldsmiths, Dean of the School of Advanced Study, Master of Birkbeck, Director of the London School of Economics. The heads of Royal Holloway, Queen Mary, and King’s College are known as the Principal.
Special Facilities
Art collections include the Courtauld Institute Galleries (located in Somerset House), the Royal Holloway Picture Gallery (in Egham, Surrey), and the Strang Print Room at University College London. Museums include the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College (see Petrie, Sir Flinders), the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in Gordon Square, and the Medical Museum at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals. In addition to colleges’ and institutes’ own libraries, the University of London Library in Senate House is a major academic resource for the humanities and social sciences and includes the Durning-Lawrence and Sterling Collections, the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic and Social History, and the Library of the British Psychological Society.
History
The University of London did not begin as a federal organization: it was formed in stages out of institutions that came into existence in various historical contexts. No single founder was responsible for shaping the university. The colleges and institutes that form the federal university are all distinct and separate institutions. All have their own history and many are much older than the federal university. The first public proposal to establish the University of London was in a letter published in The Times on February 9, 1825 by Thomas Campbell. This resulted in the foundation of University College London in 1826. University College attracted much public attention for eliminating religious affiliation from entrance requirements, and sectarian theology from the syllabus. King’s College London opened in 1831, having obtained its charter in 1829.
In 1836 the government founded the University of London as an examining body, chartered to award degrees to candidates produced by University College and King’s College, plus the medical schools and other institutions that could be recognized for the purpose. Awarding degrees remained the basic purpose of the University of London for the rest of the 19th century. In 1900 the university was transformed into a federal university, and examinations gave way to an institution concerned with teaching and research. A major constitutional change in 1929 gave more power to the centre.
Over the years the university has grown and developed, as more institutions have joined the federation and the size of the multi-faculty colleges has increased greatly. More recently power has been devolved back to the colleges, who are responsible for their own programmes of study and the award of degrees to their students.
The foundation of the University of London marked a number of new departures in the British system of higher education: its matriculation examination was used as the first national school-leaving certificate, which was the origin of the School Certificate and the General Certificate of Education; the university’s syllabus brought a new range of subjects into the scope of British university education for the first time, particularly laboratory science and modern languages; degrees were awarded from the start without discrimination on religious grounds and, in 1878, examinations were thrown open to women for the first time in Britain.
For its first 100 years, the university was housed in a succession of locations. Not until 1929 did the university acquire a freehold of its own. The site in Bloomsbury is dominated by the Portland stone-clad Senate House, designed by Charles Holden and dubbed London’s first skyscraper.
Although since the 1930s the university has been associated with Bloomsbury, only a proportion of the university is found there. Some colleges are elsewhere in London (Imperial College and Heythrop College are in Kensington, Queen Mary is in east London, Goldsmiths College and St George’s Hospital Medical School are in south London). Other institutions are outside the city, such as Wye College (Kent), the University Marine Biological Station (Millport, Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland), the British Institute (Paris) and Royal Holloway College, whose campus in Egham, Surrey, contains the flamboyant Founder’s Building, modelled on the Château de Chambord of the Loire Valley.