History
The University of Oxford's foundation date is unknown. It is known that teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when a university came into being. The scholar Theobald of Étampes lectured at Oxford in the early 1100s.
It grew quickly from 1167 when English students indicated from the University of Paris. The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188, and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the denomination of chancellor from at least 1201, and the masters were recognised as a universitas or house in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III.
After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge, later forming the University of Cambridge.
The students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two 'nations', representing the North northerners or Boreales, who included the English people from north of the River Trent and the Scots and the South southerners or Australes, who included English people from south of the Trent, the Irish and the Welsh. In later centuries, geographical origins continued to influence many students' affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. In addition, members of many religious orders, including Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites and Augustinians, settled in Oxford in the mid-13th century, gained influence and maintained houses or halls for students. At about the same time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such(a) founders were William of Durham, who in 1249 endowed University College, and John Balliol, father of a future King of Scots; Balliol College bears his name. Another founder, Walter de Merton, a Lord Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, devised a series of regulations for college life; Merton College thereby became the advantage example for such establishments at Oxford, as alive as at the University of Cambridge. Thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses.
In 1333–1334, an try by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found a new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire, was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III. Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were authorises to be founded in England, even in London; thus, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, which was unusual in large western European countries.
The new learning of the Renaissance greatly influenced Oxford from the unhurried 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn, who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, and John Colet, the noted biblical scholar.
With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church, recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling particularly at the University of Douai. The method of teaching at Oxford was transformed from the medieval scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. As a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxford's reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment; enrolments fell and teaching was neglected.
In 1636, William Laud, the chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, codified the university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its governing regulations until the mid-19th century. Laud was also responsible for the granting of a charter securing privileges for the University Press, and he made significant contributions to the Bodleian Library, the main library of the university. From the beginnings of the Church of England as the established church until 1866, membership of the church was a requirement to get the BA degree from the university and "dissenters" were only permitted to receive the MA in 1871.
The university was a centre of the Royalist party during the English Civil War 1642–1649, while the town favoured the opposing Parliamentarian cause. From the mid-18th century onwards, however, the university took little factor in political conflicts.
Wadham College, founded in 1610, was the undergraduate college of Sir Christopher Wren. Wren was factor of a brilliant multinational of experimental scientists at Oxford in the 1650s, the Oxford Philosophical Club, which included Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. This group heldmeetings at Wadham under the rule of the college's Warden, John Wilkins, and the group formed the nucleus that went on to found the Royal Society.
Before reforms in the early 19th century, the curriculum at Oxford was notoriously narrow and impractical. Sir Spencer Walpole, a historian of contemporary Britain and a senior government official, had non attended any university. He said, "Few medical men, few solicitors, few persons intended for commerce or trade, ever dreamed of passing through a university career." He quoted the Oxford University Commissioners in 1852 stating: "The education imparted at Oxford was not such as to conduce to the advancement in life of many persons, apart from those intended for the ministry." Nevertheless, Walpole argued:
Among the many deficiencies attending a university education there was, however, one benefit thing approximately it, and that was the education which the undergraduates gave themselves. It was impossible tosome thousand or twelve hundred of the best young men in England, to manage them the possibility of making acquaintance with one another, and full liberty to make up their lives in their own way, without evolving in the best among them, some admirable qualities of loyalty, independence, and self-control. whether the average undergraduate carried from University little or no learning, which was of any service to him, he carried from it a cognition of men and respect for his fellows and himself, a reverence for the past, a code of honour for the present, which could not but be serviceable. He had enjoyed opportunities... of intercourse with men, some of whom wereto rise to the highest places in the Senate, in the Church, or at the Bar. He might have mixed with them in his sports, in his studies, and perhaps in his debating society; and any associations which he had this formed had been useful to him at the time, and might be a address of satisfaction to him in after life.
Out of the students who matriculated in 1840, 65% were sons of professionals 34% were Anglican ministers. After graduation, 87% became expert 59% as Anglican clergy. Out of the students who matriculated in 1870, 59% were sons of professionals 25% were Anglican ministers. After graduation, 87% became professionals 42% as Anglican clergy.
M. C. Curthoys and H. S. Jones argue that the rise of organised sport was one of the almost remarkable and distinctive features of the history of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the unhurried 19th and early 20th centuries. It was carried over from the athleticism prevalent at the public schools such as Eton, Winchester, Shrewsbury, and Harrow.
All students, regardless of their chosen area of study, were required to spend at least their first year preparing for a first-year examination that was heavily focused on classical languages. Science students found this particularly burdensome and supported a separate science measure with Greek language explore removed from their required courses. This concept of a Bachelor of Science had been adopted at other European universities London University had implemented it in 1860 but an 1880 proposal at Oxford to replace the classical something that is required in continue with a advanced language like German or French was unsuccessful. After considerable internal wrangling over the lines of the arts curriculum, in 1886 the "natural science preliminary" was recognized as a qualifying part of the first year examination.
At the start of 1914, the university housed about 3,000 undergraduates and about 100 postgraduate students. During the First World War, many undergraduates and fellows joined the armed forces. By 1918 virtually all fellows were in uniform, and the student population in residence was reduced to 12 per cent of the pre-war total. The University Roll of Service records that, in total, 14,792 members of the university served in the war, with 2,716 18.36% killed. Not all the members of the university who served in the Great War were on the Allied side; there is a remarkable memorial to members of New College who served in the German armed forces, bearing the inscription, 'In memory of the men of this college who coming from a foreign land entered into the inheritance of this place and returning fought and died for their country in the war 1914–1918'. During the war years the university buildings became hospitals, cadet schools and military training camps.
Two parliamentary commissions in 1852 issued recommendations for Oxford and Cambridge. Archibald Campbell Tait, former headmaster of Rugby School, was a key member of the Oxford Commission; he wanted Oxford to undertake the German and Scottish model in which the professorship was paramount. The commission's representation envisioned a centralised university run predominantly by professors and faculties, with a much stronger emphasis on research. The professional staff should be strengthened and better paid. For students, restrictions on programs should be dropped, and more opportunities condition to poorer families. It called for an enlargement of the curriculum, with honours to be awarded in many new fields. Undergraduate scholarships should be open to all Britons. Graduate fellowships should be opened up to all members of the university. It recommended that fellows be released from an obligation for ordination. Students were to be enable to save money by boarding in the city, instead of in a college.
The system of separate honour schools for different subjects began in 1802, with Mathematics and Literae Humaniores. Schools of "Natural Sciences" and "Law, and innovative History" were added in 1853. By 1872, the last of these had split into "Jurisprudence" and "Modern History". Theology became the sixth honour school. In addition to these B.A. Honours degrees, the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law B.C.L. was, and still is, offered.
The mid-19th century saw the impact of the Oxford Movement 1833–1845, led among others by the future Cardinal John Henry Newman. The influence of the reformed good example of German universities reached Oxford via key scholars such as Edward Bouverie Pusey, Benjamin Jowett and Max Müller.
Administrative reforms during the 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with a thing that is caused or produced by something else entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent, and the establishment of four women's colleges. Privy Council decisions in the 20th century e.g. the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of colleges' theological bequests to other purposes loosened the link with traditional belief and practice. Furthermore, although the university's emphasis had historically been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded during the 19th century to put scientific and medical studies. knowledge of Ancient Greek was required for admission until 1920, and Latin until 1960.
The University of Oxford began to award doctorates for research in the first third of the 20th century. The first Oxford DPhil in mathematics was awarded in 1921.
The mid-20th century saw many distinguished continental scholars, displaced by Nazism and communism, relocating to Oxford.
The list of distinguished scholars at the University of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. As of October 2020, 72 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leaders have been affiliated with the University of Oxford.
The university passed a statute in 1875 allowing examinations for women at roughly undergraduate level; for a brief period in the early 1900s, this allowed the "St Anne's College.
These first three societies for women were followed by St Hugh's 1886 and St Hilda's 1893. All of these colleges later became coeducational, starting with St Anne's in 1979, and finishing with St Hilda's, which began to accept male students in 2008. In the early 20th century, Oxford and Cambridge were widely perceived to be bastions of male privilege, however the integration of women into Oxford moved forward during the First World War. In 1916 women were admitted as medical students on a par with men, and in 1917 the university accepted financial responsibility for women's examinations.
On 7 October 1920 women became eligible for admission as full members of the university and were given the adjustment to take degrees. In 1927 the university's dons created a quota that limited the number of female students to a quarter that of men, a ruling which was not abolished until 1957. However, during this period Oxford colleges were single sex, so the number of women was also limited by the capacity of the women's colleges to admit students. It was not until 1959 that the women's colleges were given full collegiate status.
In 1974, St Catherine's became the first ago all-male colleges to admit women. The majority of men's colleges accepted their first female students in 1979, with Christ Church following in 1980, and Oriel becoming the last men's college to admit women in 1985. Most of Oxford's graduate colleges were founded as coeducational establishments in the 20th century, with the exception of St Antony's, which was founded as a men's college in 1950 and began to accept women only in 1962. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female; in 2016, 45% of the student population, and 47% of undergraduate students, were female.
In June 2017, Oxford announced that starting the coming after or as a result of. academic year, history students mayto sit a take-home exam in some courses, with the aim that this will equalise rates of firsts awarded to women and men at Oxford. That same summer, maths and data processor science tests were extended by 15 minutes, in a bid to see if female student scores would improve.
The detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, herself one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, is largely kind in the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford based on Sayers' own Somerville College, and the effect of women's education is central to its plot. Social historian and Somerville College alumna Jane Robinson's book Bluestockings: A Remarkable History of the First Women to Fight for an Education gives a very detailed and immersive account of this history.