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 second-oldest continuously operating university globally. It expanded rapidly from 1167, when Henry II prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. When disputes erupted between students and the Oxford townspeople, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford comprises 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges, four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter). and a range of academic departments that are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university that controls its own membership and has its own internal structure and activities. 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 2024, the university had a total consolidated income of £3.05 billion, of which £778.9 million was from research grants and contracts. In 2024, Oxford ranked first nationally for undergraduate education.

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 2022,^[update] 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 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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Wesley Clark is a retired four-star general in the U.S. Army. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clark, who was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was a Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford where he earned a master's degree in Economics, and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. Clark commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000. Clark joined the 2004 race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a drafted candidate on September 17, 2003, but withdrew from the primary race on February 11, 2004, and campaigned for the eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry. (more...)

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St Edmund Hall, often referred to as "Teddy Hall", was established at some point in the 13th century, probably in about 1278. The college is named after St Edmund of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, the first known Oxford Master of Arts and the first Oxford-educated Archbishop of Canterbury, who lived and taught on the college site. The name St Edmund Hall (Aula Sancti Edmundi) first appears in a 1317 rental agreement. It was the last surviving medieval academic hall at Oxford, only obtaining college status in 1957, and retaining the term "Hall" for reasons of history. It is based on a small central site on the north side of the High Street: the old dining hall dates from 1659, the chapel and old library from the late 17th century, and the library is the 12th-century former church of St Peter-in-the-East. The college has about 375 undergraduates and 175 postgraduates. The Principal is the microbiologist Keith Gull. Alumni of the college include the comedians Terry Jones and Stewart Lee, the former England rugby international Stuart Barnes, the journalist and broadcaster Robin Day, and Ken Macdonald and Keir Starmer, former Directors of Public Prosecutions. (Full article...)

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Credit: David Iliff

The Divinity School, built between 1427 and 1483, was formerly used for lectures, oral exams and discussions on theology. The elaborate ceiling was designed by William Orchard.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that British surgeon Theodore Dyke Acland was the son-in-law of Jack the Ripper suspect Sir William Gull (pictured)?
... that at the 1895 United Kingdom General Election, Tankerville Chamberlayne's election as a Member of Parliament was declared void because of electoral fraud?
... that Arthur William Hodge was the only white person in the history of the British West Indies to be executed for killing a black slave?
... that Lord Michael Fitzalan-Howard and his seven siblings all had first names beginning with the letter "M"?
... that it took over 50 years to complete the foundation of Jesus College, as one Principal lost the draft statutes and the next one kept the replacement copy in his study for several years?

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If the Victorians can be said to have rampaged, they did so to greatest effect in the few acres of Oxford beside and immediately south of the University parks... There is Keble College, red brick sprawling so copiously that one feels the stuff must have got out of control, unleashing some dark force upon a helpless architect. Or the houses that survive as tenacious Gothic islands amid the concrete cliffs of the new University Departments.

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— Penelope Lively, from The House in Norham Gardens

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