The term plate glass university or plateglass university refers to a group of universities in the United Kingdom established or promoted to university status in the 1960s. The original plate glass universities were established following decisions by the University Grants Committee in the late 1950s and early 1960s, prior to the Robbins Report in 1963. However, the term has since expanded to encompass the institutions that became universities as a result of Robbins' recommendations.
Origin of terminology
The term plateglass was coined by Michael Beloff for a book he wrote about these universities, to reflect their modern architectural design which often contains wide expanses of plate glass in steel or concrete frames. This contrasted with the red brick universities and the very much older ancient universities. Beloff applied the term specifically to the new creations of the 1960s, not including the institutions promoted from university colleges or colleges of advanced technology, or created by division of existing universities "as Durham shed Newcastle". All of the original plateglass universities were created de novo as universities.
Beloff's plateglass universities
Beloff listed seven universities in his book. These were the seven universities approved by the UGC prior to the Robbins Report. , the first of the plateglass generation
Unlike previous universities in the United Kingdom which were usually named after the city they were located in, the new universities instead were typically named after the county or wider area they served. The universities founded in Colchester, Canterbury and Brighton were named after the counties they are located in and the university in Coventry, Warwickshire was named after the county town of Warwick. The university in Norwich, which is in the county of Norfolk, was instead named for the wider area of East Anglia which also includes Suffolk and Essex. The universities built in Lancaster and York were located in the county towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire respectively, furthermore unlike the other areas there were already several established universities within those counties. Since the passage of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 several new universities have been created within the same city as a plate-glass university and have been named after the city: Brighton, Canterbury Christ Church, Coventry, Norwich University of the Arts and York St John.
Common references
Certain aspects of the design of these universities acknowledges the formation of the group; for example, at Sussex the first batches of student residences to be built were named after some of the other new universities, i.e. "Essex House", "Kent House", "Lancaster House", "Norwich House", and "York House".
Other universities sometimes referred to as plate glass universities
Research at the Department for Education in 2016 categorised universities into four age groups: ancient, red brick, plate glass, and post-1992. The institutions that gained university status in this period are listed below. Almost all of these were promoted to university status, rather than created as universities like the institutions in Beloff's original list; ten were previously colleges of advanced technology.
The DfE study classified higher education institutions according to "the length of time an HEI had been established", without a detailed definition of how this was determined Keele might thus be considered "Red Brick" under this classification as it entered the university sector, as might Newcastle and Dundee, which were colleges of the universities of Durham and St Andrews respectively. The definition might also include institutions and colleges of the University of London that became part of the university sector in that period but did not receive university status:
The Scottish universities from the 1960s are also known as "chartered universities" as they were established, and are governed, by their royal charters.
