Redbrick : a social and architectural history of Britain's civic universities / William Whyte.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whyte, William (William Hadden), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Universities and colleges--Great Britain--History.

Universities and colleges.

Universities and colleges--Great Britain--Sociological aspects--History.

College buildings--Great Britain--History.

College buildings.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xvi, 389 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2015.

Summary:

In the last two centuries Britain has experienced a revolution in higher education, with the number of students rising from a few hundred to several million. Yet the institutions that drove-and still drive-this change have been all but ignored by historians. Drawing on a decade's research, and based on work in dozens of archives, some of them used for the very first time, this is the first full-scale study of the civic universities for more than 50 years. Tracing their story from the 1780s until the 2010s, it is an ambitious attempt to write the Redbrick revolution back into history. William Whyte argues that these institutions created a distinctive and influential conception of the university-something that was embodied in their architecture and expressed in the lives of their students and staff. It was this Redbriek model that would shape their successors founded in the twentieth century, ensuring that the usual university experience in Britain is a Redbrick one. Using a vast range of previously untapped sources, Redbrick is not just a new history, but a new sort of university history: one that seeks to rescue the social and architectural aspects of education from the disregard of previous scholars and thus provide the richest possible account of university life. It will be of interest to students and scholars of modern British history, to anyone who has ever attended university, and to all those who want to understand how our higher education system has developed-and how it may evolve in the future. Book jacket.

Contents:

I 1783-1843

Prologue 21

1 New Universities for a New Century 29

2 The People and Places of the University of London 51

Conclusion 67

II 1843-1880

Prologue 71

3 Experiments in Ireland and England 78

4 Building the Mid-Victorian University 101

Conclusion 119

III 1880-1914

Prologue 125

5 The Making of a Modern University 132

6 Life in a Modern University 147

Conclusion 171

IV 1914-1949

Prologue 177

7 Redbrick Attacked 184

8 Redbrick Inhabited 205

Conclusion 217

V 1949-1973

Prologue 221

9 The Expansion of Redbrick 229

10 Buildings and Battles 248

Conclusion 268

VI 1973-1997

Prologue 273

11 Reshaping Higher Education 279

12 Students and Staff 290

13 Towards a New Architecture? 307

Conclusion 319

14 Epilogue: Redbrick since 1997 321.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-379) and index.

ISBN:

9780198716129

0198716125

OCLC:

907660714