Types of UK universities

Types of UK universities

Keep hearing the terms Red Brick and Plate Glass universities? Are you wondering what bricks and glass have to do with universities? Let UKuni explain.

Ancient Universities

For hundreds of years there were only a small handful of universities that were founded in England, Scotland and Ireland. The earliest was the University of Oxford in 1096 and the latest of the Ancient Universities was the University of Dublin in 1592.

Red Brick Universities

Red Brick originally referred to 6 Civic universities that were given charters in the late 19th Century in the big industrial cities of the UK. The term Red Brick referred to a building at the University of Liverpool which was built from Red Bricks, but the term also referred more generally to "new" buildings/institutions.

The 6 original Red Brick institutions were then joined by a number of other universities as the definition was relaxed to include universities given a charter between 1900 and 1963.

Plate Glass Universities

Plate Glass Universities were the next batch of universities to be given royal charter between 1963 and 1992.

The Rest?

There are a group of universities that were previously called Polytechnics and then given university status; these institutions are referred to as "New Universities".

Recently a number of further education and teacher training colleges have been given university status and these are generally referred to as "Recently Created Universities".

In typical UK style, there are also a number of other universities that don't fit into any of the groups.

Let us know in the comments if you have any ideas about which universities are the anomalies.

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60 universities and colleges sanctioned by Home Office
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