University of Oxford Degree: A University Embedded in the Fabric of a City
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university located in Oxford, England, with a history and development stretching over nine centuries. There is evidence of teaching there from 1096 but no precise date of its foundation is known. Oxford is known to have been the oldest university in the English-speaking world. It grew slowly from a community of scholars into an institution with colleges, academic departments, libraries and research facilities spread throughout the city.
Its early growth was determined by factors external to England. In 1167 Henry II banned English students from the University of Paris and thus accelerated the growth of Oxford. In the next century endowed colleges began to provide accommodation and organized support for scholars. The three oldest surviving colleges, University College, Balliol and Merton, were founded between 1249 and 1264. These foundations helped create the collegiate structure that still informs university life.
Oxford’s system provides a place for students in a college, and a place for them in the university at large. Colleges offer a place to live and study, and also provide libraries, meals, welfare and undergraduate teaching. The university is responsible for the content of courses, the organization of lectures, the carrying out of examinations and the awarding of degrees. Academic work is conducted in four divisions: Humanities, Social Sciences, Medical Sciences and Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences. That is, smaller academic communities are incorporated into a much larger teaching and research institution.
Learning Through the Oxford Tutorial
Tutorials are a special feature of undergraduate education. It is usually a tutor with two or three students and is focused on an in-depth discussion of a particular subject. Preparation might involve reading, writing an essay or working through problems. Then students talk through their thinking, field questions and reconsider their conclusions. Lectures, classes and practical work are offered as well as tutorials, the balance of which varies by subject. The focus is on continued preparation and participation in academic discourse. The university determines course content, organises lectures and conducts the examinations leading to a University of Oxford Degree.
Access to Oxford was very different at different times. Women’s halls began to open from 1878, but women were not admitted as full members of the university until 1920. Alongside such institutional changes, the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries also saw a great expansion of scientific and medical research, building on Oxford’s long-standing traditions in the humanities.
Oxford’s collections also link scholarship to public life. The Bodleian Library opened in 1602, and the Ashmolean, founded in 1683, was Britain’s first public museum. They, the university’s natural history collections, gardens and other museums, underpin teaching and give visitors access to objects, books and ideas from many periods and cultures.