UK

Keeping up-to-date on global exclusion

 University of London

UCL is one of the world’s leading multi-disciplinary universities, with more than 11,000 staff and 39,000 students from 150 different countries. Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, and became one of the two founding institutions of the University of London. UCL was the first university in England to welcome students of any religion and the first to welcome women on equal terms with men. 

Established as a secular alternative to Oxford and Cambridge, the only two other English universities at the time, we became the first to explicitly exclude religious qualification as an entry requirement. In 1858, Charles Dickens’ magazine, All the Year Round, coined the term “The People’s University”, which would “extend her hand even to the young shoemaker who studies in his garret”. 

UCL is also the first University to give external students the opportunity to continue to earn a living while studying, and to study privately and take exams without coming to London.