Red brick university (or redbrick university) is an informal term used to refer to six particular universities founded in the major industrial cities of England. Five of the six red brick institutions gained university status before World War I and were initially established as civic science and/or engineering colleges. In the case of the University of Manchester which merged in 2004, its predecessor, the Victoria University of Manchester, gained a royal charter and red brick status in 1903.
Whilst the term was originally coined as these institutions were new and thus regarded by the ancient universities as arriviste, the description has since ceased to be derogatory with the 1960s proliferation of universities and the reclassification of polytechnics in 1992. The six institutions are members of the Russell Group (which receives two-thirds of all research grant funding in the United Kingdom).
Read more about Red Brick University: The Civic University Movement, Origins of The Term, Other Institutions, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words red, brick and/or university:
“His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“They dropped separately after the celebration,
handpicked,
one after the other like artichoke leaves.
After that I walked to my car awkwardly
over the painful bare remains on the brick sidewalk....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)