‘University’

Abstract

This chapter addresses the need for a definition of ‘university’ in England. The lack of any comprehensive and consistent definition of a ‘university’ in the English tradition does not mean that trends and indications left no footprints. Certain norms have come and gone. Until the nineteenth century, there was no expectation that a university would be engaged in both teaching and ‘research’, though a level of advanced knowledge (‘scholarship’) was to be expected of university teachers. In its teaching, for many centuries, an English university offered a limited range of subjects. The expansion from the nineteenth century into scientific and ‘humanities’ studies — such as modern history and English language and literature and modern languages — led to in the late twentieth-century and twenty-first century, additions such as media studies and management studies and sports science.