Higher education in GB

Higher education in GB
The expansion of higher education led to necessity of creating more universities. There are two conditional types of problems of Higher education in Great Britain: financial and social. The main social ones are: increasing number of people who’d like to get education, exclusivity of Oxbridge, separation of sexes and the repression of people from poor backgrounds. The main financial problems are: the funding gap, including high fee and poor academic pay.
However, there are 90 universities today and all can be divided into 5 categories: the medieval English foundations, the medieval Scottish ones, the nineteenth-century ‘red-brick’ ones, the twentieth-century ‘plate-glass’ ones, the previous polytechnics and the open university.
Oxford and Cambridge, founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are the most famous of Britain’s universities. They continue to attract many of the best brains all over the world, although it’s quite difficult to enter them. These are the English medieval foundations. The Scottish medieval foundations are Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrew’s and Aberdeen. All of them were founded in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
“red-bricks” universities were founded in the nineteenth century as a result of the Industrial revolution and the expansion of Britain’s overseas empire. Most of them are situated in big industrial cities, such as Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol.
“plate-glass” universities were established in 1960s as a result of the expansion of higher education at that time. They are named so after counties or regions, where they are situated, for example Sussex, Kent, East Anglia.
Over 50 polytechnics and similar higher education institutes acquired university status in 1992.
There is also a highly successful Open University which is different from the others. It provides every person in Britain with the opportunity to study for a degree, without leaving their home. It was set up by the British government in 1967. This university is truly open and has no formal entry requirements. The main quotation of students’ admission here is “first come, first served”. Students here are of all ages and come from different backgrounds. In addition to all the reading and writing assignments, students here have got a lot of watching and listening to do, as there are weekly O.U. lectures broadcast on BBC television and radio. Each student at this university gets the help and support of his own tutor. At the meeting students get to know other students on the course and join with them into “self-help” groups. There is a summer school which you must attend in the first year. You spend a week at a college or university taking courses, having discussions, and working hard. The exams come in October. The final mark is based on the exam and the written assignments done during the year. If you pass you get one credit towards the six that you need for a degree. It will take you 6 or 8 years to get a degree.
There are 3 degrees in universities: Bachelor of Arts, or of Science on competition of the undergraduate course, and Master of Arts or of Science on competition of postgraduate work, usually a one- or two-year course involving some original research. Some students continue to complete a three-year period of this research to get the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It takes 3 or 4 years to get the first degree (Bachelor of arts or of science).
Admission procedures
A student who wants to go university applies for admission before GCE. First of all he must write to UCAS, and they send him a form in which he is to make up a list of universities (from one up to 5) which he wants to enter in order of preference. This form, together with the results of the GCSE exam, an account of his out-of-school activities and 2 references, one of which must be from the headmaster of his school, is then sent back to the UCAS.
The UCAS send copies of the form to the universities named in the list. Each applicant is first considered by the university admission board. In some cases the board sends the applicant a refusal. If there are no reasons for immediate refusal, the university admission officer passes the candidate’s papers on to the academic department. One or two members of this department will look at the candidate’s application. On the basis of this, the department may make the candidate an offer (either a definite offer or a conditional one) or send him a definite rejection. The conditional offer means that the candidate will be accepted if he fulfils the requirements stated in the offer. In his turn, the student may accept the offer conditionally. The results of the GCE exams come out in August. If the candidate has fulfilled the conditions, the university sends him a definite offer. The candidate must accept or refuse within 72 hours.