Universities

The independence of Britain’s educational institutions is most noticeable in universities. They make their own choices of who to accept on their courses. There is not right of entry to university for anybody. Universities normally select students on the basis of A-level results and an interview. Those with better exam grades are more likely to be accepted. But in principal there is nothing to stop a university accepting a student who has no A-levels at all and conversely, a student with top grades in several A-levels is not guaranteed a place.

The availability of higher education has increased greatly in the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, universities only take the better students. Because of this, and also because of the relatively high degree of personal supervision of students which the low ratio of students to staff allows, nearly all university students complete their studies in three years. (It is only modern languages and certain vocational studies that students take more than three years.)

Another reason for the low drop-out rate is that ‘full-time’ really means full-time. A large proportion of students live ‘on campus’, (or, in Oxford and Cambridge, ‘in college’) or in rooms nearby, which tends to mean that the student is surrounded by a university atmosphere.

However, the expansion of higher education is putting a strain on these characteristics. More students means more expense for the state. The government’s response has been to abolish the student grants which, at one tome, covered most of a student’s expenses during the thirty-week teaching year. On top of that, most students have to pay fees. As a result, many more students cannot afford to live away from home. In addition, more than a third of students now have part-time jobs, which means that they cannot spend so much time on their studies. A further result of increased numbers of students without a corresponding increase in budgets is that the student/staff ratio has been getting higher. All these developments threaten to reduce the traditionally high quality of British university education. They also threaten to reduce its availability to students from low-income families.

Types of universities

• Oxbridge: This name denotes universities of Oxford and Cambridge, both founded in the medieval period. They are federations of semi-independent colleges, each college having its own staff, known as ‘Fellows’. Most colleges have their own dining hall, library and chapel and contain enough accommodation for at least half of the students. The Fellows teach the college students, either one-to-one or in very small groups (known as ‘tutorials’ in Oxford and ‘supervisions’ in Cambridge. Oxbridge has the lowest student/staff ratio in Britain. Before 1970 all Oxbridge colleges were single-sex (mostly for men). Now, the majority admit both sexes.

• The old Scottish universities: By 1600 Scotland boasted four universities. They were Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and St Andrews. The last of these resembles Oxbridge in many ways, while the other three are more like civic universities (see below) in that most students live at home or find their own rooms in town. At all of them the pattern of study is closer to the continental tradition than to the English one – there is less specialization than at Oxbridge.

• The University of London started in 1836 with just two colleges. Many more have joined since, scattered widely around the city, so that each college (most are non-residential) is almost a separate university. The central organization is responsible for little more than exams and the awarding of degrees.

• The older civic (‘redbrick’) universities: During the nineteenth century various institutes of higher education, usually with a technical bias, sprang up in the new industrial towns and cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Their buildings were of local material, often brick, in contrast to the stone of older universities (hence the name ‘redbrick’). They catered only for local people. At first they prepared students for London University degrees, but later they were given right to award their own degrees, and so became universities themselves.

• The campus universities: They are purpose-built institutions located in the countryside but close to towns. They tend to emphasize relatively ‘new’ academic disciplines such as social sciences and to make greater use than other universities of teaching in small groups, often known as ‘seminars’.

• The new civic universities: These were originally technical colleges set up by local authorities in the first half the twentieth century. In the early 1990s most of these became universities. Their most notable feature is flexibility with regard to studying arrangements, including ‘sandwich’ courses (i.e. studies interrupted by periods of time outside education).

QUESTIONS:

1. What are the basic features of the British educational system?

2. What kind of schools are public schools? What are the main characteristics of the public school system?

3. How is learning organized at different levels of education in Britain?

4. What is the effect of this approach to teaching?

5. What changes were introduced in the last quarter of the twentieth century?

6. How are exams taken? What exams do the majority of British students take?

7. What degrees are awarded after graduating from universities?

8. How do people gain qualifications for certain professions such as an architect, a lawyer, a teacher?

9. What are the characteristic features of institutions of higher education?

10. What developments threaten to reduce the traditionally high quality of British university education?

11. What are the types of universities in Britain?