Portal:University of Oxford
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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world’s second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. After escalating conflict between students and the Oxford townspeople, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.
The University of Oxford is made up of 43 colleges – of which 36 are chartered colleges (independent bodies), 4 are permanent private halls (owned by religious organisations), and 3 are societies (controlled by the university) – and a range of academic departments that are organised into four divisions. Colleges control their own membership and activities. Typically social life for students is centred around fellow college members. All students are members of a college. Oxford does not have a main campus. Its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre and around the town. Undergraduate teaching at the university consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.
Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2025, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.02 billion, of which £801.3 million was from research grants and contracts.
Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2025,[update] 76 Nobel Prize laureates, four Fields Medalists, and six Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford. Its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is home to a number of scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes in the world. (Full article...)
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The Registrar of the University of Oxford is one of the university's senior officials, acting (in the words of the university's statutes) as the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professional development of their staff and for the development of other administrative support". The workload of the role, which has a 550-year history, has increased over time. In the 16th century, it was regarded as a lucrative position and one registrar reacted violently when the university voted to remove him from office for failing to carry out his duties for a year, leading to his temporary imprisonment. A commission headed by former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith recommended in 1922 that Oxford should improve its administration and that the registrar should become a more significant figure. As the historian Brian Harrison put it, Oxford's administration was "edging... slowly from decentralized amateurism towards centralized professionalism." The growth in Oxford's administration led to a move in 1968 to purpose-built accommodation in Wellington Square (pictured): until that time, the administration had been housed in the Clarendon Building in the centre of Oxford. About 4,000 of the university's staff of approximately 8,000 are under the Registrar's control. (Full article...)
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Claud Schuster, 1st Baron Schuster (1869–1956) was a British barrister and civil servant noted for his long tenure as Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Office. Schuster studied history at New College, Oxford before joining the Inner Temple to become a barrister. Practising in Liverpool, Schuster was not particularly successful, and he joined Her Majesty's Civil Service in 1899 as secretary to the Chief Commissioner of the Local Government Act Commission. After serving as secretary to several more commissions, he was made Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Office in 1915. Schuster served in this position for twenty-nine years under ten different Lord Chancellors, and was called "one of the most influential Permanent Secretaries of the 20th century". His influence led to criticism and suspicions that he was a "power behind the throne", which culminated in a verbal attack by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Hewart in 1934 during a session of the House of Lords. Schuster retired in 1944 and was made Baron Schuster, of Cerne, in the County of Dorset. Despite being officially retired he continued to work in government circles, such as with the Allied Commission for Austria and by using his seat in the House of Lords as a way to criticise legislation directly. (more...)
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Wadham College, in the centre of the city on Parks Road, was founded in 1610 by Dorothy Wadham, using money that her husband Nicholas had bequeathed for the establishment of an Oxford college. The main quadrangle was designed by William Arnold and constructed between 1610 and 1613, and includes a statue of King James I (in whose reign the college was founded). The hall, one of the largest in Oxford, has a hammer-beam roof and Jacobean woodwork. The grounds include large gardens, the Holywell Music Room, dating from 1748, and more modern buildings used for accommodation and teaching. The original rules that no women were to enter the premises apart from a laundress who was "above suspicion" were gradually relaxed, and women were admitted as students in 1974. The college traditionally has a left-wing ethos. Alumni include the conductor Thomas Beecham, the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, the politician Michael Foot and Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury. (Full article...)
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Did you know
Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:
- ... that Christopher Tin (pictured) is the first Fulbright scholar for film scoring?
- ... that the world's largest mathematical experiment, designed by Brian Butterworth, found women to be faster than men at subitizing?
- ... that Englishman James McFarlane was appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav for his eight-volume work Oxford Ibsen?
- ... that British plant physiologist Daphne Osborne showed that the gas ethylene is a natural plant hormone which regulates ageing and the shedding of leaves and fruits?
- ... that millionaire's daughter Rose Dugdale joined an IRA active service unit and took part in the first helicopter bombing raid on the British Isles in 1974?
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On this day
Events for 11 August relating to the university, its colleges, academics and alumni. College affiliations are marked in brackets.
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