University College London University College London UCL (legally University College London) is a public research university in London, England, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It is the largest university in the United Kingdom by total enrolment, and the largest by postgraduate enrolment. Established in 1826 as London University by founders inspired by the radical ideas of Jeremy Bentham, UCL was the first university institution to be established in London, and the first in England to be entirely secular and to admit students regardless of their religion. UCL also makes the contested claims of being the third-oldest university in
University College London based in Holmbury St Mary, Surrey, and there is a UCL campus in Doha, Qatar specialised in archaeology, conservation and museum studies (to be transferred to Hamad Bin Khalifa University in 2020 at the end of UCL's contact with the Qatar Foundation). From 2010 to 2015 UCL ran a University Preparatory Certificate course at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, and had a campus in Adelaide, Australia from 2010 to 2017. Although UCL is a constituent college of the federal University of London, in most ways it is comparable with free-standing, self-governing and independently funded universities, and it awards its own