Plate glass university Information

The term plate glass university or plateglass university refers to a group of universities in the United Kingdom established or promoted to university status in the 1960s. The original plate glass universities were established following decisions by the University Grants Committee (UGC) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, prior to the Robbins Report in 1963. However, the term has since expanded to encompass the institutions that became universities as a result of Robbins recommendations.

The term "plateglass" was coined by Michael Beloff for a book he wrote about these universities, to reflect their modern architectural design which often contains wide expanses of plate glass in steel or concrete frames. This contrasted with the (largely Victorian) red brick universities and the very much older ancient universities.

Beloff applied the term specifically to the new creations of the 1960s, not including the institutions promoted from university colleges or colleges of advanced technology, or created by division of existing universities "as Durham shed Newcastle". All of the original plateglass universities were created de novo as universities.

Beloff listed seven universities in his book. These were the seven universities approved by the UGC prior to the Robbins Report.

Unlike previous universities in the United Kingdom which were usually named after the city they were located in (for example the University of Cambridge in Cambridge), the new universities instead were typically named after the county or wider area they served. The universities founded in Colchester, Canterbury and Brighton were named after the counties they are located in (Essex, Kent and Sussex respectively) and the university in Coventry, Warwickshire was named after the county town of Warwick. The university in Norwich, which is in the county of Norfolk, was instead named for the wider area of East Anglia which also includes Suffolk and Essex. The universities built in Lancaster and York were located in the county towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire respectively, furthermore unlike the other areas there were already several established universities within those counties (Manchester and Liverpool in Lancashire; Leeds, Sheffield and Hull in Yorkshire).

Since the passage of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 several new universities have been created within the same city as a plate-glass university and have been named after the city: Brighton, Canterbury Christ Church, Coventry, Norwich University of the Arts and York St John.

Certain aspects of the design of these universities acknowledges the formation of the group; for example, at Sussex the first batches of student residences to be built were named after some of the other new universities, i.e. "Essex House", "Kent House", "Lancaster House", "Norwich House" (for UEA), and "York House".

Research at the Department for Education in 2016 categorised universities into four age groups: ancient (pre-1800), red brick (1800–1960), plate glass (1960-1992), and post-1992.

The institutions that gained university status in this period are listed below. Almost all of these were promoted to university status, rather than created as universities like the institutions in Beloffs original list; ten were previously colleges of advanced technology (CATs).

(Dates refer to the granting of university status by Royal Charter, not to founding of the institution.)

The DfE study classified higher education institutions (HEIs) according to "the length of time an HEI had been established", without a detailed definition of how this was determined Keele might thus be considered "Red Brick" under this classification as it entered the university sector (as a university college) prior to 1960), as might Newcastle and Dundee, which were colleges of the universities of Durham and St Andrews respectively. The definition might also include institutions and colleges of the University of London that became part of the university sector in that period but did not receive university status:

The Scottish universities from the 1960s (Heriot-Watt, Stirling, Strathclyde, Dundee and the Open University in Scotland) are also known as "chartered universities" as they were established, and are governed, by their royal charters.

Malcolm Bradburys 1975 campus novel The History Man is set in the fictional plate glass University of Watermouth.

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