ABSTRACT
By the end of the nineteenth century, there were three broad sectors of university education in England. Oxford and Cambridge remained the premier national institutions offering a collegiate experience with a complete package of residence, tuition and pastoral care for full-time students. It was a revamped, reinvigorated and somewhat more efficient form of the old ideal of liberal education in which the whole person was nurtured and finished. This updated version of the traditional conception of the university retained considerable cultural cachet and was still regarded as providing a suitable preparation for leadership roles. The University of London had a dual aspect. As a utilitarian examining body it supervised the standards of university education across the country and throughout the world. Reforms were also fashioning appropriate institutions in the capital into a teaching university in and for London. These institutions had pioneered a new form of higher education that was more accessible, modern and vocationally oriented, but the Oxbridge-style association of teaching and examining was being reasserted in the formation of a teaching university. Formally, the provincial university colleges were modelled on the original London ones and developed under the aegis of the University of London, although three had acquired greater autonomy under the Victoria University. In many respects, the provincial and London colleges shared much in common. The metropolitan context, however, gave a distinctive character to the London institutions, which was considerably enhanced by the creation of the teaching university, while the provincial colleges increasingly constituted a separate sector of university-level education.
