New Universities

The term new universities has been used informally to refer to several different waves of new universities created or renamed as such in the United Kingdom. As early as 1928, the term was used to describe the then-new civic universities, such as Bristol University and the other "red brick universities". It later came to be used to refer to any of the universities founded in the 1960s after the Robbins Report on higher education. These institutions are now known as "plate glass universities". Today, the term specifically relates instead to any of the former polytechnics, central institutions or colleges of higher education that were given university status by John Major's government in 1992 (through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992) — as well as colleges that have been granted university status since then. Though referred to as "New" or "modern" some Polytechnics were founded in the early to late 19th Century. These institutions are more often called post-1992 universities and sometimes modern universities.