The Civic University Movement
| Name | Red brick ascension | Predecessor institutions | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria University | 1880 | Owens College, Manchester (1851) University College Liverpool (1882) |
Led by the Victoria University of Manchester and included Leeds and Liverpool colleges. Defunct by 1904 as Leeds and Liverpool sought separate university status. |
| University of Birmingham | 1900 | Birmingham Medical School (1825) Mason Science College (1875) |
|
| University of Liverpool | 1903 | University College, Liverpool (1882) | |
| University of Leeds | 1904 | Leeds School of Medicine (1831) | |
| University of Sheffield | 1905 | University College of Sheffield (1897) | |
| University of Bristol | 1909 | University College Bristol (1876) | |
| University of Manchester | 2004 | Victoria University of Manchester (1880) UMIST (1956) |
Victoria University of Manchester gained royal charter as a red brick in 1903. Victoria University and UMIST merged in 2004. |
The English civic university movement developed out of various 19th century private research and education institutes in industrial cities. The 1824 Manchester Mechanics' Institute formed the basis of the Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and thus led towards the University of Manchester proper. The University of Birmingham has origins dating back to the 1825 Birmingham Medical School. The University of Leeds also owes its foundations to a medical school: the 1831 Leeds School of Medicine. The University of Bristol began with the 1876 University College, Bristol, the University of Liverpool with a University College in 1881, and the University of Sheffield with a university college in 1897.
These universities were distinguished by being non-collegiate institutions that admitted men without reference to religion or background and concentrated on imparting to their students "real-world" skills, often linked to engineering. In this sense they owed their structural heritage to the Humboldt University of Berlin, which emphasised practical knowledge over the academic sort. This focus on the practical also distinguished the red brick universities from the ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge and from the newer (although still pre-Victorian) University of Durham, collegiate institutions which concentrated on divinity, the liberal arts and imposed religious tests (e.g. assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles) on staff and students. Scotland's ancient universities (St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh), usually grouped with Dundee, were founded on a different basis.
Read more about this topic: Red Brick University
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