Monday, 27 June 2016
Imperial College
The Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition was composed by Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Fuller and different individuals from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The Great Exhibition made an overflow of £186,000 utilized as a part of making a range in the South of Kensington praising the support of human expressions, industry, and science. Albert demanded the Great Exhibition surplus ought to be utilized as a home for society and training for everybody. His dedication was to discover useful answers throughout today's social difficulties. Sovereign Albert's vision constructed the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Geological Museum, Royal College of Science, Royal College of Art, Royal School of Mines, Royal School of Music, Royal College of Organists, Royal School of Needlework, Royal Geographical Society, Institute of Recorded Sound,Royal Horticultural Gardens, Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute. Regal schools and the Imperial Institute converged to shape what is presently Imperial College London.
Royal College of Chemistry
The Royal College of Chemistry was built up by private membership in 1845 as there was a developing mindfulness that pragmatic parts of the exploratory sciences were not well taught and that in the United Kingdom the instructing of science specifically had fallen behind that in Germany. As an aftereffect of a development prior in the decade, numerous lawmakers gave assets to build up the school, including Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone and Robert Peel. It was likewise bolstered by Prince Albert, who induced August Wilhelm von Hofmann to be the first teacher.
William Henry Perkin examined and worked at the school under von Hofmann, yet surrendered his position in the wake of finding the first manufactured color, mauveine, in 1856. Perkin's revelation was provoked by his work with von Hofmann on the substance aniline, got from coal tar, and it was this leap forward which started the manufactured color industry, a blast which a few antiquarians have named the second compound upset. His commitment prompted the formation of the Perkin Medal, an honor given every year by the Society of Chemical Industry to a researcher living in the United States for an "advancement in connected science bringing about extraordinary business improvement". It is viewed as the most astounding honor given in the modern concoction industry.
Royal School of Mines
The Royal School of Mines was set up by Sir Henry de la Beche in 1851, creating from the Museum of Economic Geology, a gathering of minerals, maps and mining hardware. He made a school which established the frameworks for the instructing of science in the nation, and which has its legacy today at Imperial. Ruler Albert was a benefactor and supporter of the later improvements in science instructing, which prompted the Royal College of Chemistry turning out to be a piece of the Royal School of Mines, to the formation of the Royal College of Science and in the end to these foundations turning out to be a piece of his arrangement for South Kensington being an instructive area.
Royal College of Science
The Royal College of Science was set up in 1881. The fundamental goal was to bolster the preparation of science educators and to create instructing in other science subjects nearby the Royal School of Mines earth sciences specialities.
1907 to 2000
In 1907, the recently settled Board of Education found that more prominent limit for higher specialized instruction was required and a proposition to blend the City and Guilds College, the Royal School of Mines and the Royal College of Science was endorsed and passed, making The Imperial College of Science and Technology as a constituent school of the University of London. Royal Charter, conceded by Edward VII, was formally marked on 8 July 1907. The fundamental grounds of Imperial College was developed close to the structures of the Imperial Institute in South Kensington.
City and Guilds College was established in 1876 from a meeting of 16 of the City of London's attire organizations for the Advancement of Technical Education (CGLI), which meant to enhance the preparation of experts, specialists, technologists, and designers. The two fundamental destinations were to make a Central Institution in London and to lead an arrangement of qualifying examinations in specialized subjects. Confronted with their proceeding with powerlessness to locate a considerable site, the Companies were in the end convinced by the Secretary of the Science and Art Department, General Sir John Donnelly (who was likewise a Royal Engineer) to establish their organization on the eighty-seven section of land (350,000 m²) site at South Kensington purchased by the 1851 Exhibition Commissioners (for GBP 342,500) for 'purposes of workmanship and science' in unendingness. The recent two schools were fused by Royal Charter into the Imperial College of Science and Technology and the CGLI Central Technical College was renamed the City and Guilds College in 1907, however not fused into Imperial College until 1910.
2000 to 2010
In 2000 Imperial converged with both the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and Wye College, the University of London's farming school in Wye, Kent. It at first consented to keep Agricultural Sciences at Wye, yet shut them in 2004. The inceptions of the later obtained College of St Gregory and St Martin at Wye, was initially established by John Kempe, the Archbishop of York, in 1447 as a theological college, with a farming school being built up at Wye in 1894 after the evacuation of the theological school.
In December 2005, Imperial declared a science park program at the Wye grounds, with broad lodging; then again, this was deserted in September 2006 after grievances that the proposition encroached on Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and that the genuine size of the plan, which could have raised £110m for the College, was known not and Ashford Councils and their experts yet hid from the public.One analyst watched that Imperial's plan mirrored "the condition of vote based system in Kent, the change of an eminent investigative school into a getting a handle on, profoundly forceful, neo-corporate organization, and the safeguard of the status of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – all through England, not simply Wye – against wild covetousness supported by the intrigue of two imperative nearby powers. Wye College grounds was at last shut in September 2009.
In May 2001 another workforce structure was built up, with all divisions being alloted to the Faculties of Engineering, Medicine, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences. A merger with University College London was proposed in October 2002, yet was deserted a month later after challenges from staff over potential redundancies.
In 2003 Imperial was allowed degree-honoring forces in its own particular right by the Privy Council. The London Center for Nanotechnology was built up around the same time as a joint endeavor in the middle of UCL and Imperial College London. In 2004 the Tanaka Business School (now named the Imperial College Business School) and another Main Entrance on Exhibition Road were opened by The Queen. The UK Energy Research Center was additionally settled in 2004 and opened its central station at Imperial College. In November 2005 the Faculties of Life Sciences and Physical Sciences converged to wind up the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
On 9 December 2005, Imperial College reported that it would initiate transactions to withdraw from the University of London. Royal College turned out to be completely autonomous of the University of London in July 2007 and the first understudies to enlist for an Imperial College degree were postgraduates starting their course in October 2007, with the first students selecting for an Imperial degree in October 2008.
In July 2008 the Center for Advanced Structural Ceramics was opened in the Materials divi
2010 to present
In May 2012 Imperial, UCL and the IT organization Intel declared the foundation of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, a London-based establishment for exploration into the eventual fate of urban areas.
In August 2012 it was declared that Imperial would be the lead foundation for the MRC-NIHR Phenome Center, another exploration place for customized medication to be based at GlaxoSmithKline's innovative work office in Harlow, Essex, acquiring the counter doping offices used to test tests amid the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
As of October 2015, the recently framed Dyson School of Design Engineering will be putting forth a course in configuration building taking after a £12m gift by the James Dyson Foundation
University of Oxford
Founding
The University of Oxford has no known establishment date. Educating at Oxford existed in some structure in 1096, however it is hazy when a college appeared. It became rapidly in 1167 when English understudies came back from the University of Paris. The antiquarian Gerald of Wales addressed to such researchers in 1188 and the first known outside researcher, Emo of Friesland, touched base in 1190. The leader of the college was named a chancellor from no less than 1201 and the experts were perceived as a colleges or organization in 1231. The college was allowed an imperial sanction in 1248 amid the rule of King Henry III. After debate in the middle of understudies and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, a few scholastics fled from the savagery to Cambridge, later shaping the University of Cambridge.
The understudies related together on the premise of topographical starting points, into two "countries", speaking to the North (Northern or Boreales, which incorporated the English individuals north of the River Trent and the Scots) and the South (Southern or Australes, which included English individuals south of the Trent, the Irish and the Welsh). In later hundreds of years, land roots kept on affecting numerous understudies' affiliations when participation of a school or corridor got to be standard in Oxford. Notwithstanding this, individuals from numerous religious requests, with Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites and Augustinians, settled in Oxford in the mid-thirteenth century, picked up impact and kept up houses or lobbies for understudies. At about the same time, private promoters built up schools to serve as independent insightful groups. Among the soonest such organizers were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, and John Balliol, father of a future King of Scots; Balliol College bears his name. Another originator, Walter de Merton, a Lord Chancellor of England and a while later Bishop of Rochester, conceived a progression of regulations for school life; Merton College along these lines turned into the model for such foundations at Oxford, and also at the University of Cambridge. From that point, an expanding number of understudies spurned living in lobbies and religious houses for living in universities.
In 1333–34, an endeavor by some disappointed Oxford researchers to establish another college at Stamford, Lincolnshire was obstructed by the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge requesting of King Edward III. From that point, until the 1820s, no new colleges were permitted to be established in England, even in London; accordingly, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, which was bizarre in western European nation
Renaissance period
The new learning of the Renaissance incredibly impacted Oxford from the late fifteenth century onwards. Among college researchers of the period were William Grocyn, who added to the recovery of Greek dialect studies, and John Colet, the prominent scriptural researcher.
With the Reformation and the breaking of ties with the Roman Catholic Church, Recusant researchers from Oxford fled to mainland Europe, settling particularly at the University of Douai. The strategy for instructing at Oxford was changed from the medieval Scholastic technique to Renaissance training, in spite of the fact that organizations connected with the college endured misfortunes of area and incomes.
In 1636, Chancellor William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, systematized the college's statutes. These, to a huge degree, remained its representing regulations until the mid-nineteenth century. Praise was additionally in charge of the conceding of a sanction securing benefits for the University Press, and he made noteworthy commitments to the Bodleian Library, the primary library of the college. From the beginning of the Church of England until 1866, participation of the congregation was a necessity to get the B.A. degree from Oxford, and "dissidents" were just allowed to get the M.A. in 1871.
The college was a focal point of the Royalist gathering amid the English Civil War (1642–1649), while the town supported the restricting Parliamentarian cause. From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, in any case, the University of Oxford took little part in political clashes
Modern period
The mid-nineteenth century saw the effect of the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), drove among others by the future Cardinal Newman. The impact of the transformed model of German college came to Oxford by means of key researchers, for example, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Benjamin Jowett and Max Müller.
The arrangement of discrete honor schools for distinctive subjects started in 1802, with Mathematics and Literae Humaniores. Schools for Natural Sciences and Law, and Modern History were included 1853. By 1872, the last was part into Jurisprudence and Modern History. Religious philosophy turned into the 6th honor school. Notwithstanding these B.A. Respects degrees, the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.) was, and still is, advertise
Regulatory changes amid the nineteenth century incorporated the supplanting of oral examinations with composed passageway tests, more prominent resilience for religious dispute, and the foundation of four ladies' universities. twentieth century Privy Council choices (e.g. the annulment of mandatory every day adore, separation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from administrative status, preoccupation of schools' religious inheritances to different purposes) slackened the connection with conventional conviction and practice. Besides, in spite of the fact that the college's accentuation customarily had been on established learning, its educational programs extended over the span of the nineteenth century to incorporate experimental and medicinal studies. Learning of Ancient Greek was required for confirmation until 1920, and Latin until 1960.
The mid-twentieth century saw numerous recognized mainland researchers, dislodged by Nazism and Communism, moving to Oxford.
The rundown of recognized researchers at the University of Oxford is long and incorporates numerous who have made real commitments to British governmental issues, the sciences, medication, and writing. More than 50 Nobel laureates and more than 50 World Leaders have been associated with the University of Oxford.
Women's education
The college passed a statute in 1875 permitting its agents to make examinations for ladies at generally undergrad level. The initial four ladies' universities were built up because of the activism of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women (AEW). Woman Margaret Hall (1878) was trailed by Somerville College in 1879; the initial 21 understudies from Somerville and Lady Margaret Hall went to addresses in rooms over an Oxford bread cook's shop. The initial two universities for ladies were trailed by St Hugh's (1886), St Hilda's (1893) and St Anne's College (1952). In the mid twentieth century, Oxford and Cambridge were generally seen to be bastions of male benefit, and it was not until 7 October 1920 that ladies got to be qualified for affirmation as full individuals from the college and were given the privilege to take degrees. In 1927 the college's wears made a standard that restricted the quantity of female understudies to a quarter that of men, a decision which was not annulled until 1957. In any case, before the 1970s all Oxford schools were for men or ladies just, so that the quantity of ladies was restricted by the limit of the ladies' universities to concede understudies. It was not until 1959 that the ladies' universities were given full university status.
In 1974, Brasenose, Jesus, Wadham, Hertford and St Catherine's turned into the first beforehand all-male schools to concede ladies.
In 2008, the last single-sex school, St Hilda's, conceded its first men, so that all universities are presently co-private. By 1988, 40% of students at Oxford were female; the proportion was around 46%:54% to support men for the 2012 undergrad affirmation.
The investigator novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, herself one of the first ladies to pick up a scholastic degree from Oxford, is to a great extent set in an (anecdotal) ladies' school at Oxford, and the issue of ladies' instruction is integral to its plot.
University College London
1826 to 1836 (London University)
UCL was established on 11 February 1826 under the name London University as a common distinct option for the religious colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. London University's first Warden was Leonard Horner, who was the first researcher to head a British college.
Regardless of the accepted way of thinking that the scholar Jeremy Bentham was the organizer of UCL, his immediate contribution was constrained to the buy of offer No.633, at an expense of £100 paid in nine portions between December 1826 and January 1830. In 1828 he did name a companion to sit on the chamber, and in 1827 endeavored to have his follower John Bowring designated as the first teacher of English or History, yet on both events his applicants were unsuccessful. This proposes while his thoughts may have been persuasive, he himself was less so. However Bentham is today regularly viewed as the "profound father" of UCL, as his radical thoughts on instruction and society were the motivation to the organization's authors, especially the ScotsmenJames Mill (1773–1836) and Henry Brougham (1778–1868).
In 1827, the Chair of Political Economy at London University was made, with John Ramsay McCulloch as the first occupant, setting up one of the first branches of financial aspects in England. In 1828 the college turned into the first in England to offer English as a subject and the educating of Classics and solution started. In 1830, London University established the London University School, which would later get to be University College School. In 1833, the college named Alexander Maconochie, Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, as the first teacher of geology in the UK. In 1834, University College Hospital opened as a showing clinic for the college restorative sc
1836 to 2005
In 1836, London University was fused by Royal Charter under the name University College, London. Around the same time, the University of London was made by illustrious sanction as a degree-granting looking at load up for understudies from partnered schools and universities, with University College and King's College, London being named in the contract as the initial two offshoots.
The Slade School of Fine Art was established in 1871 after an inheritance from Felix Slade.
In 1878 the University of London picked up a supplemental sanction making it the first British college to be permitted to honor degrees to ladies. That year, UCL turned into the first school to concede ladies on equivalent terms to men in the resources of Arts and Law and of Science, in spite of the fact that ladies stayed banned from the resources of Engineering and of Medicine (except for courses on general wellbeing and cleanliness). Ladies were at long last admitted to restorative studies under the weight of the first world war in 1917, albeit after the war finished impediments were put on their numbers.
In 1898, Sir William Ramsay found the components krypton, neon and xenon whilst teacher of science at UCL.
In 1900 the University of London was reconstituted as a government college with new statutes drawn up under the University of London Act 1898. UCL, alongside various different universities in London, got to be schools of the University of London. While the vast majority of the constituent establishments held their self-governance, UCL was converged into the University in 1907 under the University College London (Transfer) Act 1905 and lost its legitimate freedom.
1900 additionally saw the choice to name a salaried leader of the school. The primary officeholder was Carey Foster, who served as Principal (as the post was initially titled) from 1900 to 1904. He was succeeded by Gregory Foster (no connection), and in 1906 the title was changed to Provost to maintain a strategic distance from disarray with the Principal of the University of London. Gregory Foster stayed in post until 1929.
In 1906 the Cruciform Building was opened as the new home for University College Hospital.
UCL supported significant bomb harm amid the Second World War, including to the Great Hall and the Carey Foster Physics Laboratory. The principal UCL understudy magazine, Pi Magazine, was distributed surprisingly on 21 February 1946. The Institute of Jewish Studies moved to UCL in 1959. The Mullard Space Science Laboratory was built up in 1967. In 1973, UCL turned into the first global connection to the forerunner of the web, the ARPANET, sending the world's first email around the same time.
Despite the fact that UCL was the first college to concede ladies on the same terms as men, in 1878, the College's senior normal room, the Housman Room, remained men-just until 1969. After two unsuccessful endeavors a movement was passed that finished isolation by sex at UCL. This was accomplished by Brian Woledge (Fielden Professor of French at UCL from 1939 to 1971) and David Colquhoun, around then a youthful speaker in Pharmacology.
In 1976, another sanction restored UCL's legitimate autonomy, in spite of the fact that not the ability to honor its own degrees. It was likewise under this contract the College turned out to be formally known asUniversity College London (in this manner forsaking the comma after "School", which had been being used subsequent to 1836).
In 1986, UCL converged with the Institute of Archeology. In 1988 UCL converged with the Institute of Laryngology and Otology, the Institute of Orthopedics, the Institute of Urology and Nephrology andMiddlesex Hospital Medical School. In 1994 the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust was built up. UCL converged with the College of Speech Sciences and the Institute of Ophthalmology in 1995, the Institute of Child Health and the School of Podiatry in 1996 and the Institute of Neurology in 1997. In 1998 UCL converged with the Royal Free Hospital Medical School to make the Royal Free and University College Medical School (renamed the UCL Medical School in October 2008). In 1999 UCL converged with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the Eastman Dental Institute.
The UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science, the first college office on the planet gave particularly to lessening wrongdoing, was established in 2001.
Proposition for a merger in the middle of UCL and Imperial College London were reported in 2002.The proposition incited solid resistance from UCL showing staff and understudies and the AUT union, which censured "the revolting scurry and absence of interview", prompting its deserting by the UCL Provost Sir Derek Roberts. The web journals that halted the merger, are protected, however a portion of the connections are presently broken: see David Colquhoun's website, and the somewhat more sleek Save UCL blog, which was controlled by David Conway, a postgraduate understudy in the division of Hebrew and Jewish contemplates.
The London Center for Nanotechnology was set up in 2003 as a joint endeavor in the middle of UCL and Imperial College London.
Since 2003, when UCL Professor David Latchman got to be Master of the neighboring Birkbeck, he has manufactured closer relations between these two University of London schools, and by and by keeps up offices at both. Joint examination focuses incorporate the UCL/Birkbeck Institute for Earth and Planetary Sciences, the UCL/Birkbeck/IoE Center for Educational Neuroscience, the UCL/Birkbeck Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology, and the Birkbeck-UCL Center for Neuroimaging.
2005 to 2010
In 2005, UCL was at long last allowed its own particular taught and research degree honoring forces and all new UCL understudies enrolled from 2007/08 qualified with UCL degrees. Likewise in 2005, UCL received another corporate marking, under which, in addition to other things, the name University College London was supplanted by the basic initialism UCL in every single outer correspondence. Around the same time a noteworthy new £422 million building was opened for University College Hospital on Euston Road, the UCL Ear Institute was set up and another building for the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies was opened.
In 2007, the UCL Cancer Institute was opened in the recently developed Paul O'Gorman Building. In August 2008 UCL shaped UCL Partners, a scholarly wellbeing science focus, with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. In 2008 UCL set up the UCL School of Energy and Resources in Adelaide, Australia, the first grounds of a British college in the nation. The School is situated in the notable Torrens Building in Victoria Square and its creation took after transactions between UCL Vice Provost Michael Worton and South Australian Premier Mike Rann.
In 2009, the Yale UCL Collaborative was built up between UCL, UCL Partners, Yale University, Yale School of Medicine and Yale – New Haven Hospital. It is the biggest coordinated effort ever, and its extension has in this way been reached out to the humanities and sociologi
2010 to present
In June 2011, the mining organization BHP Billiton consented to give A$10 million to UCL to subsidize the foundation of two vitality establishments – the Energy Policy Institute, situated in Adelaide, and the Institute for Sustainable Resources, situated in London. In November 2011 UCL reported arrangements for a £500 million interest in its fundamental Bloomsbury grounds more than 10 years, and the foundation of another 23-section of land grounds by the Olympic Park in Stratford in the East End of London. It amended its arrangements of extension in East London and in December 2014 reported to assemble a grounds UCL East covering 11 sections of land and give up to 125,000m2 of space on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. UCL East will be a piece of the arranged Olympicopolis that plans to change the Olympic Park into a social and development center where UCL will open its first school of configuration, a focal point of trial designing and an exhibition hall without bounds, alongside a living space for understudies.
The School of Pharmacy, University of London converged with UCL on 1 January 2012, turning into the UCL School of Pharmacy inside of the Faculty of Life Sciences. In May 2012, UCL, Imperial College London and the semiconductor organization Intel declared the foundation of the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, a London-based establishment for exploration into the eventual fate of urban areas.
In August 2012 UCL got feedback for promoting an unpaid exploration position; it thusly pulled back the advert.
UCL and the Institute of Education framed a vital cooperation in October 2012, incorporating co-operation in instructing, exploration and the advancement of the London schools framework. In February 2014 the two foundations declared their goal to combine and the merger was finished in December 2014.
In October 2013 it was reported that the Translation Studies Unit of Imperial College London would move to UCL, turning out to be a piece of the UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society. In December 2013, it was declared that UCL and the scholarly distributed organization Elsevier will team up to set up the UCL Big Data Institute. In January 2015 it was declared that UCL had been chosen by the UK government to be one of the five originator individuals from the Alan Turing Institute (together with the colleges of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and Warwick), an organization to be set up at the British Library to advance the improvement and utilization of cutting edge arithmetic, software engineering, calculations and Big Data.
In 2015 UCL built up another School of Management concentrated on innovation, development and business enterprise, supplanting its Department of Management Science and Innovation, with arrangements to move to new premises in One Canada Square, Canary Wharf in May 2016
Queen's University Belfast
Parliamentary representation
Queen's University Belfast has its roots in the Belfast Academical Institution, which was founded in 1810, one of the United Kingdom's 10 oldest universities, and remains as the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. The present university was first chartered as "Queen's College, Belfast" in 1845, when it was associated with the simultaneously founded Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway, as part of the Queen's University of Ireland – founded to encourage higher education for Catholics and Presbyterians, as a counterpart to Trinity College, Dublin, then an Anglican institution. Queen's College, Belfast, opened in 1849. Its main building, the Lanyon Building, was designed by the English architect, Sir Charles Lanyon. At its opening, it had 23 professors and 343 students. Some early students at Queen's University Belfast took University of London examinations.
The Lanyon Building, Queen's University Belfast
The Irish Universities Act, 1908 dissolved the Royal University of Ireland, which had replaced the Queen's University of Ireland in 1879, and created two separate universities: the current National University of Ireland and Queen's University of Belfast.Main articles: Queen's University of Belfast (UK Parliament constituency) and Queen's University of Belfast (Northern Ireland Parliament constituency)
The university was one of only eight United Kingdom universities to hold a parliamentary seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster until such representation was abolished in 1950. The university was also represented in the Parliament of Northern Ireland from 1920–1968, where its graduates elected four seats.
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| Queen Victoria |
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| Charles Lanyon |
Modern day
On 20 June 2006 the university announced a £259 million investment programme focusing on facilities, recruitment and research. One of the outcomes of this investment has been a new university library; the McClay library was designed by Boston-based architects Sheply, Bulfinch, Richardson & Abbott, working in association with Belfast architects, Robinson Patterson Partnership, and opened in July 2009. The building has been named in honour of Sir Allen McClay, a major benefactor of Queen's University and of the Library.In June 2010, the university announced that they would be launching a £7.5m Ansin international research hub with Seagate Technologies.
Queen's is one of the largest employers in Northern Ireland, with a total workforce of 3,903, of whom 2,414 were members of academic, academic-related and research staff and 1,489 were administrative employees.
Robert Gordon University
The university derives from Robert Gordon's Hospital, an institution set up in the mid-18th century to provide the poor with a basic education and reasonable start in life, and the various educational institutions which developed in Aberdeen to provide adults with technical, vocational and artistic training, mostly in the evenings and part-time. Following numerous mergers between these establishments, it became Robert Gordon's Technical College in 1910, then following further developments became Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology in 1965 and began to conduct increasing amounts of research and provide degree-level education (by now mostly offering day classes to full-time students). Finally, it became a university in 1992. Unlike some modern universities in the UK which were created following the government reforms of 1992, it has never been a polytechnic (these were never part of the Scottish education system).
Founding institutions
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| Bust of John Gray, whose philanthropy founded Gray's School of Art |
Meanwhile, in the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution led to a greater need for scientific and technical education for working-class adults, with “Mechanic’s Institutes” spreading through Scotland, patterned on that founded by George Birkbeck at Glasgow (he would later found Birkbeck College, the University of London’s night school). The Aberdeen Mechanic’s Institution opened in 1824 providing evening classes in subjects such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, book-keeping, maritime navigation and art. By 1855 it was receiving government funding as the School of Science and Art, with a Technical School founded two years later.
Child and adult education combined: Robert Gordon’s College (1881)
Government education reforms in the 1870s saw the “Hospital” system fall out of favour and encouraged mergers with other educational establishments. As part of these reforms, the Aberdeen Mechanic’s Institute and Technical School merged with Robert Gordon’s Hospital in 1881. The resulting institution was known as Robert Gordon’s College. It provided an education for boys but as a day school only, and evening (and later day) classes for adults (male and female) in science, technology, commerce and general subjects. Art classes offered by the Mechanic’s Institution were transferred to a new, independent School of Art close by, paid for by local businessman John Gray and opened in 1885.Splitting child from adult: Robert Gordon’s Technical College (1910 on)
By the end of the 19th century, Robert Gordon’s College was a major provider of technical education, receiving large government grants. Following further reforms, in 1903 the adult education part of the College was designated a Central Institution along with Gray’s School of Art (which became a Central Institution two years earlier), allowing the adult education activities to develop independently rather than under the control of the local School Board. However, even this was not sufficient to meet demand for technical education, and dedicated Technical Colleges were being set up in other Scottish cities. As a result, in 1910 adult education activities were split from the school and became Robert Gordon's Technical College. Also merged into the new Technical College was the city’s School of Domestic Economy which provided classes in domestic science. The day school for boys continued as Robert Gordon's College, and the two institutions shared a campus, buildings and until 1981, a Board of Governors and administrative staff.During the 1920s, the first Ordinary and Higher Certificates and Diplomas were awarded, and by the 1930s Robert Gordon’s Technical College was made up of Schools of Engineering, Chemistry, Maths & Physics, Pharmacy, Art (including architecture), Domestic Science, and Navigation. Around this time the first students began to be prepared for external degree examinations – for the University of Aberdeen’s BSc in Engineering. A system of student governance also developed, with a Student Representative Council formed in 1931. In the closing years of World War II, candidates started to be prepared to sit exams for external degrees of the University of London, in subjects such as Chemistry and Engineering, but only via part-time and/or evening classes. After 1945, to aid with settling large numbers of returning soldiers into a career, the Government backed a Business Training Scheme which allowed the Technical College to introduce courses in Business Administration.
Technical College to Institute (1965) to University (1992)
In 1955, the Technical College received a large gift of land. Local property developer and entrepreneur Tom Scott Sutherland purchased the Victorian manor and estate of Garthdee House in 1953, located by the banks of the River Dee on the outskirts of the city. Finding himself and his wife living out of only four rooms in the enormous mansion, he donated it and the estate in 1955 for a new school of architecture. These classes had taken place at Gray's School of Art, but had been expanding in the 1940s and 50s and much more space was needed. Following completion of a modern extension to the house, the new Scott Sutherland School of Architecture opened in 1957. In 1966, Gray’s School of Art also moved to a large new building on this estate, freeing its Schoolhill building for administrative use. By 2013, all activities had transferred to Garthdee, with the addition of land immediately adjacent purchased from Aberdeen City Council in the 1990s.
The 1963 Robbins Report on the future of UK higher education recommended major expansion, which led to the renaming of the institution to Robert Gordon’s Institute of Technology to suggest its increasing role in higher education rather than further education. As well as new “plate-glass” universities, reforms following the report created the polytechnics in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It also created the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) to allow non-university institutions (like the polytechnics and Scottish central institutions) to run programmes that graduated students with CNAA degrees. The Institute’s first CNAA degree programmes began in pharmacy in 1967, then in engineering, chemistry and physics in 1969, and expanded at undergraduate and postgraduate level to all disciplines. Around this time, the government also began to transfer non-degree teaching (e.g. certificate courses in navigation) to local-authority colleges.
During the 1960s, an academic committee structure was set up, headed from 1969 by an Academic Council. During the 1970s, these committees underwent expansion and reform to improve participation by academic staff in decision-making. For the first time, a faculty structure was introduced, with Faculties of Art & Architecture, Engineering, Arts, and Sciences, led by deans. A department dedicated to providing computer services to the Institute was also established in 1974, and the first professorships were introduced in 1975. In 1981, the separation of the Board of Governors and administration staff from Robert Gordon’s College was completed, although the school and Institute continued to share some buildings. Beginning in the 1970s, the Institute also began to provide extensive consultancy and training for the North Sea oil industry, particularly in engineering and offshore safety and survival.
The Robert Gordon University (1992 to present)
Following the reforms of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the Institute was awarded university status as The Robert Gordon University on 12 June 1992. The new university inherited numerous small campuses, and during the late 1990s and 2000s embarked on large building projects (primarily at Garthdee) to consolidate teaching at its City Centre and Garthdee campuses, assisted by a large purchase of land at Garthdee from Aberdeen City Council in the mid-1990s. As new Garthee facilities were completed, the majority of these previous campuses were sold as land for housing development (such as at Kepplestone and King Street), while City Centre facilities that were no longer required were often sold to Robert Gordon's College, with the sale proceeds paying for the expansion and new construction at Garthdee. In the 1990s and 2000s student numbers also increased considerably, requiring new and larger facilities. A merger with the University of Aberdeen was discussed in 2002, but was rejected in favour of remaining separate but collaborating more closely. By 2000, the University had consolidated to two campuses, at Garthdee (the main campus today) and a City-Centre campus at Schoolhill and St. Andrew Street in central Aberdeen. However, it had been planned since the early 1990s to eventually move all facilities to a single campus at Garthdee, and during this time additional land was purchased to enable new state-of-the-art academic buildings to be constructed to house academic departments which had been at the City Centre campus. The first phase was completed in summer 2013 with the opening of the Sir Ian Wood building (then known as Riverside East, and formally opened and renamed in July 2015), after which the City-Centre campus closed apart from the Administration Building on Schoolhill. RGU is now a single-campus university.
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