Dictionary

plate-glass university en · NOUN

Etymology

Modelled on red brick university, from the use of plate glass in modern architecture. Coined by British barrister Michael Beloff in 1970.

Meanings

1. (UK) Any of several universities founded in the United Kingdom in the 1960s in the era of the Robbins Report on higher education.
   • The new “red-bricks” of Hull, Exeter and Leicester were followed in the 60s by mass expansion as the “plate-glass universities”, such as Warwick, York and Sussex, came into being. 2014 October 12, Julian Coman, “Have England's universities been privatised by stealth?”, in The Observer, →ISSN:
   • Keele is historically important as the first ‘Plate Glass University’, but also for the vague carelessness of its planning and architecture, which made it a cautionary example, leading to the much more coherent masterplanning and landscaping at the Universities of Sussex (p. 238), Essex (p. 190), York (p. 394), East Anglia (p. 198) and Stirling (p. 508). 2022, Owen Hatherley, Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer, Penguin UK, →ISBN:

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