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The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation. It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge, where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges, four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter), and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions. Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. The university does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in a predominantly centralised fashion.

Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum, the world's oldest university museum; Oxford University Press, the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts.

Oxford has educated a wide range of notable alumni, including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2022,^[update] 73 Nobel Prize laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals. Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. (Full article...)

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The buildings of Nuffield College are to the west of Oxford's city centre, on the former site of the largely disused basin of the Oxford Canal. Nuffield College was founded in 1937 after a donation to the University of Oxford by the car manufacturer Lord Nuffield. The initial designs of the architect Austen Harrison, which were heavily influenced by Mediterranean architecture, were rejected by Nuffield, who described them as "un-English". Harrison then aimed for "something on the lines of Cotswold domestic architecture", as Nuffield wanted. The college was built to the revised plans between 1949 and 1960. During construction, the tower, about 150 feet (46 m) tall, was redesigned to hold the college's library. Reaction to the architecture has been largely unfavourable. It has been described as "Oxford's biggest monument to barren reaction" and "a hodge-podge from the start". However, the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner thought that the tower helped the Oxford skyline and predicted that it would "one day be loved". The writer Simon Jenkins doubted Pevsner's prediction, though, saying that "vegetation" was the "best hope" for the tower, and for the rest of the college too. (Full article...)

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Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury (1938–2004), was a British peer from Wimborne St Giles, Dorset. His father predeceased him, making him next in line to his grandfather, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury. When the 9th Earl died in 1961, Ashley-Cooper became the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, Baron Ashley of Wimborne St Giles and Baron Cooper of Pawlett. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he was a wealthy landowner of over 9,000 acres (3,600 ha) in East Dorset, and received honours and awards for his philanthropic and conservationist work, which included planting over a million trees. He served as president of the Shaftesbury Society, pursuing the same goals of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had founded the organization in 1840. He also served as the vice president of Sir David Attenborough's British Butterfly Conservation Society. In November 2004, he went missing in France, prompting an international police investigation. His remains were found at the bottom of a remote ravine in the foothills of the French Alps. His brother-in-law and his wife, Jamila M'Barek, were convicted of his murder. (Full article...)

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Kellogg College is one of the newest colleges at Oxford. It was established on 1 March 1990 as Rewley House, and changed its name on 1 October 1994 to reflect donations made by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (set up by the American food industrialist Will Keith Kellogg). It accepts only graduate students, mainly on a part-time basis (there are about 150 full-time students compared to 400 part-time students), and operates to support Oxford's lifelong learning provision, as well as continuing education and professional development. It traces its heritage back to efforts made by the university to provide education to those outside the university from the 1870s onwards. The college acquired a site for a new home, in the Norham Manor of north Oxford, in 2004. The President of the college is the economist Jonathan Michie, who is also Director of the university's Department for Continuing Education. (Full article...)

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Credit: Bob Collowan

Tom Tower, the bell tower over the main entrance of Christ Church, was designed by Christopher Wren. It houses "Great Tom", which rings 101 times every night at 9pm Oxford time.

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Did you know

Articles from Wikipedia's "Did You Know" archives about the university and people associated with it:

... that the establishment of the Marshal Foch Professorship of French Literature at Oxford was announced a few days after Marshal Foch (pictured) signed the Armistice with Germany to end World War I?
... that British international rally driver Tony Ambrose was given an MG sports car by his father for winning a scholarship to Jesus College?
... that Bishop Graham Chadwick served as a naval intelligence officer in World War II and was expelled from South Africa for anti-apartheid activism?
... that Somerset cricketer Izzy Westbury made her senior international debut for the Netherlands aged 15?
... that it was speculated that J. K. Rowling based the Harry Potter character Albus Dumbledore on the "splendidly bearded" T. P. Wiseman, her classics professor at Exeter University?