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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge. Oxford is ranked among the most prestigious universities in the world.
The university is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, six permanent private halls, and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. It does not have a main campus, and its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided predominantly centrally.
Oxford operates the world's oldest university museum, as well as the largest university press in the world and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the university had a total income of £2.45 billion, of which £624.8 million was from research grants and contracts.
Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 28 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2020, 72 Nobel Prize laureates, 3 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have studied, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)
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The Registrar of the University of Oxford is one of the university's senior officials, acting (in the words of the university's statutes) as the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professional development of their staff and for the development of other administrative support". The workload of the role, which has a 550-year history, has increased over time. In the 16th century, it was regarded as a lucrative position and one registrar reacted violently when the university voted to remove him from office for failing to carry out his duties for a year, leading to his temporary imprisonment. A commission headed by former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith recommended in 1922 that Oxford should improve its administration and that the registrar should become a more significant figure. As the historian Brian Harrison put it, Oxford's administration was "edging... slowly from decentralized amateurism towards centralized professionalism." The growth in Oxford's administration led to a move in 1968 to purpose-built accommodation in Wellington Square (pictured): until that time, the administration had been housed in the Clarendon Building in the centre of Oxford. About 4,000 of the university's staff of approximately 8,000 are under the Registrar's control. (Full article...)
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Nuffield College, to the west of the city centre, was founded in 1937 by the car manufacturer and philanthropist Lord Nuffield. He gave the site to the university and £900,000 (approximately £246M in modern terms) to build and endow the college. His intention had been to establish a college for engineering and business methods, but he was persuaded to let the money be used for a social sciences college instead – a decision that he sometimes later regretted, although he was sufficiently pleased with the college to leave it the bulk of his estate in his will. Construction began in 1949 and was finished in 1960, to a design by Austen Harrison. The main tower, about 150 feet (46 m) tall, holds the library and is a noted Oxford landmark. Nuffield is an all-graduate college (and was Oxford's first college for postgraduates only), primarily for research in economics, politics and sociology; there are about 75 students and 60 Fellows (many holding university posts), headed by the economist Andrew Dilnot as Warden. Former students include Kofi Abrefa Busia (former Prime Minister of Ghana), the British politician Patricia Hewitt, and the economist Robert Skidelsky. (Full article...)
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Did you know
Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:
- ... that after Evelyn Waugh (pictured) brought a priest to anoint lapsed Catholic Hubert Duggan on his deathbed, Duggan was reconciled to the church, an event Waugh fictionalised in Brideshead Revisited?
- ... that for helping endow a professorship of botany at Oxford, James Sherard was granted a doctorate in medicine by the university in 1731?
- ... that British journalist and Liberal politician Colin Coote was an editor of the The Daily Telegraph for 14 years?
- ... that Sir Ian Anstruther, 8th Baronet, held two separate baronetcies which on his death went to different sons?
- ... that George Hargreaves, Christian Party candidate in the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election, has said that the dragon symbol on the Welsh flag is "nothing less than the sign of Satan"?
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On this day
Events for 29 May relating to the university, its colleges, academics and alumni. College affiliations are marked in brackets.
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