Civilisation/Education
British universities
University of Oxford
University College is the oldest Oxford college, and was founded in 1249
Balliol College was founded in 1263
Queen's College was founded in 1341 by Robert de Eglesfield in honour of Queen Philippa of Hainault (wife of King Edward III)
Christ Church was founded by Cardinal Wolsey in 1546. Christ Church is known as ‘the house’. Christ Church has produced thirteen British prime ministers
Keble College was established in 1870, having been built as a monument to John Keble. John Keble had been a leading member of the Oxford Movement, which sought to stress the Catholic nature of the Church of England. Designed by William Butterfield
All Soul’s College has no undergraduates
Nuffield College was the first Oxford college to admit men and women
Lady Margaret Hall is named after Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. First women’s college at Oxford
Somerville College is named after Scottish mathematician and astronomer Mary Somerville
St Hilda's College was founded in 1893 as a hall for women, and remained an all-women's college until 2008
St Catherine’s College was designed by Arne Jacobsen
Hertford Bridge, popularly known as the Bridge of Sighs, is a skyway joining two parts of Hertford College over New College Lane in Oxford
Rhodes scholarships were initiated after the death of Cecil John Rhodes and have been awarded to applicants annually since 1902 by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford
Bill Clinton won a Rhodes scholarship at Oxford
St Benet's Hall is a Permanent Private Hall (PPH) of the University of Oxford. It is now the only constituent body of the University admitting men alone for undergraduate degrees
Oxford Union voted against fighting for King and Country in 1933
Chris Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, is the Chancellor of the University of Oxford
University of Cambridge
Peterhouse is the oldest Cambridge college, and was founded in 1284
King’s College was founded in 1441 by Henry VI
Queens’ College was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou
Sidney Sussex College was founded in 1596 and named after its foundress, Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex
Girton College was established in 1869 as the pioneering and therefore first residential women's college in England. The college became mixed in 1977 with the arrival of the first male Fellows. Male undergraduates have been admitted since 1979
Newnham College was founded in 1871 by Henry Sidgwick, and was the second Cambridge college to admit women after Girton College
Murray Edwards College is a women-only college. It was founded as "New Hall" in 1954
Bridge of Sighs is a covered bridge belonging to St John's College
Senior Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge University. Wranglers are students who gain first-class degrees in mathematics
Wooden spoon was given to student who came last in Cambridge maths exams
David Sainsbury is the Chancellor of the University of Cambridge
Scott Polar Research Institute is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge
Other universities
University of St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland and third oldest in the English-speaking world, having been founded between 1410 and 1413
Durham is the third-oldest university in England, founded in 1832
Trinity College, Dublin is the oldest university in Ireland
Redbrick universities – Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and Bristol. All founded before World War I
Plate glass university refers to one of the several universities founded in the United Kingdom in the 1960s in the era of the Robbins Report on higher education. East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Lancaster, Sussex, Warwick, and York
Manchester University combined with UMIST to form the largest single-site campus in the UK
UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) is the United Kingdom's largest university space research group. MSSL is the Department of Space and Climate Physics of the University College London. Based in Dorking
Robert Gordon University is in Aberdeen
University of Ulster is based in Coleraine
Floella Benjamin – chancellor of Exeter University
Planning for the Open University commenced in 1965 under Minister of State for Education Jennie Lee
Walter Perry (later Lord Perry) was appointed the Open University's first vice-chancellor in January 1969. The first students enrolled in January 1971. The University administration is based at Walton Hall, Milton Keynes
Trinity Laban is the UK's only conservatoire of Music and Dance. The Higher Education Institute was formed in 2005
Anglia Ruskin University has its origins in the Cambridge School of Art. Its campuses are located in Cambridge, Chelmsford and Peterborough
Russell Group is a collaboration of twenty UK universities that together receive two-thirds of research grant and contract funding in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1994
Office for Fair Access (OFFA) is a non-departmental public body responsible for ensuring that any university or higher education institution in England which plans to charge variable tuition fees has in place an acceptable plan to promote equitable access among its undergraduate applicants and those considering applying
Polytechnics were granted university status under the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This meant that Polytechnics could confer degrees without the oversight of the national Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) organization
American universities
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education located in the Northeastern United States –
- Brown University – Providence, Rhode Island
- Colombia University – New York
- Cornell University – Ithica, New York
- Dartmouth College – Hanover, New Hampshire
- Harvard University – Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Princeton University – Princeton, New Jersey
- University of Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Yale University – New Haven, Connecticut
The Big Three is an historical term used in the United States to refer to Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. The phrase Big Three originated in the 1880s, when these colleges dominated college football
John Harvard, the founder of Harvard University, was a clergyman
Radcliffe College is a women’s college at Harvard
Skull & Bones, founded in 1832, is the oldest of Yale’s secret societies
Colombia University was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of George II. After the American Revolutionary War King's College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784
Other universities
University of California is named after the philosopher George Berkeley
Stanford University was founded by Leland Stanford, governor of and U.S. senator from California and leading railroad tycoon, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in 1891 in memory of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr
Duke University – Durham, North Carolina
Rice University – Houston
Vanderbilt University – Nashville
Carnegie Mellon University – Pittsburgh
Norte Dame University – Notre Dame, Indiana
Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior – names for students in each year at US universities
European universities
Bologna is the oldest university in the world (founded in 1088), followed by Paris and Oxford
Salamanca is the oldest university in Spain
University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law
Uppsala University was founded in 1477, and claims to be the oldest university in Scandinavia, outdating the University of Copenhagen by two years
The Sorbonne in Paris was originally a theology college
Germany is the only EU country to allow Rhodes scholars
Marburg was the first protestant university
Founded in 1460, University of Basle is Switzerland's oldest university
Jagiellonian University in Krakow is the oldest university in Poland
La Sapienza in Rome is the largest Italian university by enrollment
University of Heidelberg was founded in 1386, and is the oldest university in Germany and was the fourth university established in the Holy Roman Empire
Established in 1290, the University of Coimbra is one of the oldest universities in continuous operation in the world. The Joanina Library is the Baroque library of the University of Coimbra, built in the 18th century. The library contains about 250,000 volumes
To date, 47 Nobel Prize laureates have studied, taught or made contributions to the University of Gottingen in Germany. Founded in 1734 by George II. In the 1930s, the University of Gottingen became a focal point for the Nazi crackdown on ‘Jewish physics’, as represented by the work of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr (both Jewish). In what was later called the ‘great purge’ of 1933, academics including Max Born, Leo Szilard and Edward Teller were expelled or fled
Schools
Charterhouse School was founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield. The school is now situated in Godalming. Former pupils are known as Old Carthusians
Dulwich College was founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn, a successful Elizabethan actor
Eton College founded by Henry VI in 1440. Eton is a full boarding school, and it is one of four such remaining single-sex boys' public schools in the United Kingdom (the others being Harrow, Radley, and Winchester) to continue this practice. Eton has educated nineteen British prime ministers
Harrow School founded in 1572 under a royal charter granted to John Lyon. Eton has educated eight prime ministers
Radley College in Oxfordshire was founded in 1847
Roedean School, near Brighton, was founded in 1885 as Wimbledon House by three sisters: Penelope, Millicent, and Dorothy Lawrence
Thomas Arnold was headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1842. Father of poet Matthew Arnold
Winchester College was founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester . Former pupils of Winchester College are known as Old Wykehamists
Kurt Hahn created the Outward Bound movement, and founded Gordonstoun School in 1934
Le Rosey, the £80,000-a-year Swiss Institute, is the most expensive boarding school in the world
Upper Sixth (UK) – same as Twelfth Grade (USA)
Grade school – primary school in USA
Corporal punishment abolished in state schools in 1986
Education Act 1944
GCE introduced in 1951
CSE introduced in 1965
GCSE introduced in 1986
Tripartite System was the arrangement of state-funded secondary education between 1944 and the 1970s in England and Wales. Three types of school, namely: grammar school, secondary technical school (sometimes described as ‘Technical Grammar’ schools) and secondary modern school
An academy is a school that is directly funded by central government (specifically, the Department for Education) and independent of control by local government in England.
An academy may receive additional support from personal or corporate sponsors, either financially or in kind. They must meet the National Curriculum core subject requirements and are subject to inspection by Ofsted. Academies are self-governing and most are constituted as registered charities
Some traditional schools blend online and offline learning, sometimes called flipped classrooms. Students watch lectures online at home and work on projects and interact with faculty while in class
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading
The General Knowledge Paper at King William’s College in the Isle of Man has been published in The Guardian since 1951
Miscellaneous
Al-Azhar University is Egypt's oldest degree-granting university
University of al-Karaouine in Fez, Morocco is the oldest continually operating university in the world
Monash University in Melbourne is Australia’s largest university
Australian National University is the highest ranked university that is not in UK or USA
In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects that were taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric
United Nations University HQ is in Tokyo
The University of the Third Age was founded in Toulouse in 1972 to improve the quality of life for older people
Johann Pestalozzi was a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer. Pestalozzi was a Romantic who felt that education must be radically personal, appealing to each learner's intuition
Friedrich Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Pestalozzi who laid the foundation for modern education based on the recognition that children have unique needs and capabilities. He developed the concept of the ‘kindergarten’, and also coined the word now used in German and English
The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy
There are three classes of Latin academic honours in use in the United States and around the world, and most universities use at least two of them. All universities use cum laude, which means “with praise.” Some universities also add magna cum laude, which translates to “with great praise”. The third honor is summa cum laude, for “with highest praise,” used for only the very best students
Commencement – graduation ceremony
Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) is a non-ministerial government department that regulates qualifications, exams and tests in England and vocational qualifications in Northern Ireland
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web
