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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 in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge.

The University of Oxford is made up of thirty-nine semi-autonomous constituent colleges, four permanent private halls, 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.

It 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 30 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. 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 Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford. It is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library. Known to Oxford scholars as "Bodley" or simply "the Bod", it is one of six legal deposit libraries under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 for works published in the United Kingdom and under Irish Law it is entitled to request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland. Though University members may borrow some books from dependent libraries (such as the Radcliffe Science Library), the Bodleian operates principally as a reference library and in general documents cannot be removed from the reading rooms. The Bodleian was established in 1602 by Thomas Bodley, who donated some of his own books. The library has expanded considerably since its foundation, and now houses 8 million items on 117 miles (188 km) of shelving. The buildings on the main site include Duke Humphrey's Library (completed 1488), the Radcliffe Camera, the Clarendon Building and the New Bodleian (designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and completed in 1940). (Full article...)

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Richard Cordray (born 1959) is an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician who has served since 2012 as the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He was a Marshall Scholar at Brasenose College from 1981 to 1983, and won his "Blue" in basketball. He later became Editor-in-Chief of the University of Chicago Law Review, and a law clerk for the U. S. Supreme Court. He was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives (1991–93) before he was appointed by the office of the Ohio Attorney General as the first Ohio State Solicitor. In 1994, Cordray left his appointed position to pursue private law practice before becoming Franklin County Treasurer in 2002, then Ohio State Treasurer in 2006. In November 2008, he was elected to serve as Ohio Attorney General starting January 8, 2009, for the remainder of the unexpired term ending January 2011. (Full article...)

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Exeter College is the fourth-oldest college of the university, having been founded in 1314 as "Stapeldon Hall" by Walter de Stapeldon, Bishop of Exeter, as a school to educate clergy. It is located on Turl Street in the centre of the city, opposite Jesus College. The college expanded in the 16th century after donations from Sir William Petre, a former Exeter graduate. The oldest remaining part of the buildings, Palmer's Tower, dates from 1432, and the hall was built in 1618. Further additions were made in the 17th and early 18th centuries, before Sir George Gilbert Scott's additions in the mid-19th century, including the chapel (inspired by the Sainte Chapelle in Paris), the library and the Broad Street range. It is the real-life basis for the fictional Jordan College in Philip Pullman's novel trilogy His Dark Materials, and the final episode of the television detective series Inspector Morse saw Morse suffering a heart attack inside Exeter College. Former students include the writers J. R. R. Tolkien, Alan Bennett and Martin Amis, the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan Liaquat Ali Khan. The college has a close relationship with Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Since 1985, 26 undergraduate students from Williams spend their junior year at Exeter each year as full members of the college. (Full article...)

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Selected image

Credit: Godot13

The towers of All Souls College, designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (c. 1661 – 1736)

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Did you know

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

... that endocrinologist Sir Raymond Hoffenberg was forced to leave South Africa in 1968 due to his opposition to apartheid, and was later President of the Royal College of Physicians and of Wolfson College (pictured)?
... that Christopher Chavasse was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, a Bishop of Rochester, and an Olympic athlete?
... that, in 1987, Bolaji Akinyemi proposed the development of nuclear weapons by Nigeria?
... that historian Henry William Carless Davis once served as a member of the British contingent to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919?
... that future Canadian Senator John Gilbert Higgins hung black crêpe paper on his door in mourning the day that Newfoundland joined Canada?

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Selected quotation

“

You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous university.

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— William Hazlitt

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Selected panorama

Credit: David Iliff

Oxford looking south from the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the centre of the city – the spire on the left is Christ Church Cathedral and Tom Tower is on the right.

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