The Shadow of Great Britain

The University of London in 1826 and the University of London in 1838 are like two portraits of the same person taken at different ages. While the outlines remain the same, this progressive university, with just a twelve-year-long history, has grown from a toddling infant to a robust young adult.

In 1826, the University of London didn’t even have a fully formed campus.

The area around Gower Street was constantly filled with the sounds of construction, and the moment you stepped onto the campus, you’d be drawn in by the dust flying everywhere.

Although there weren’t many students then, their backgrounds were quite diverse.

Some brought with them the identity of outsiders, some had records of failure, and others were secular eccentrics rejected by church universities.

What’s worse is that, even if you completed all the courses at the University of London under rigorous academic assessments, you wouldn’t receive a legitimate degree.

And what about now, twelve years later?

Although the campus still isn’t grand, the buildings here have learned to coexist with the streets. The marks of construction have been smoothed over by time, and the color of the stones has likewise become more restrained. Passersby on Gower Street no longer curiously tiptoe to glance at this so-called ”Atheist Academy” or ”freak college,” but naturally regard it as part of the city.

”Wilkins Colonnade at the University of London” by British etcher William Monk, now housed in the University College London archives.

When Sir Arthur Hastings first stepped onto the campus of the University of London in 1826, what lay before him was a large construction site.

By the time he left the position of Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of London in 1837, he had left behind four lecture halls, two semicircular tiered classrooms, a chemistry laboratory, an electromagnetism laboratory, a pharmaceutical museum, an anatomy museum, a natural history museum, a council meeting room, an affiliated hospital, an affiliated secondary school, and two libraries.

Nowadays, the courses at the University of London cover languages, mathematics, physics, medicine, psychological and moral sciences, English law, and history and political economy.

As of today, twelve years later, the University of London no longer needs to explain who it is to the public.

In fact, they even dared to break Britain’s higher education conventions by awarding their distinguished alumnus, Sir Arthur Hastings, the first Doctor of Natural Philosophy title in British history.

Unlike the German universities, in the traditional higher education system in Britain, master’s and doctorate titles are usually unrelated to learning capabilities.

In Britain, master’s and doctorate titles generally don’t require additional study, much less any thesis publication. In most cases, a master’s degree is automatically awarded several years after a bachelor’s graduation through a symbolic ceremony. Of course, if you wish to accelerate this process, you can choose to pay for it, which is particularly evident in certain church universities in England.

However, even if a master’s degree is awarded based on seniority, this doesn’t mean that all graduates who meet the seniority requirements can become masters. Only alumni with a certain social status are given this opportunity.

Once alumni are awarded a master’s degree, they automatically obtain voting rights in college internal affairs, allowing them to legitimately participate in college governance.

Initially, even the University of London, which advocated for new education, couldn’t break this tradition.

Thus, distinguished alumni like Arthur, Eld, and Tennyson almost all were awarded honorary promotions to Master of Arts by their alma mater in 1834. This was partly to commend outstanding graduates and partly to strengthen the connection between alumni and the school, thus leveraging their social resources to help the school develop.

If this is true for a master’s, it is even more so for a doctorate.

Unlike German doctorates, which are obtained through academic training, original research, and thesis defense, British doctorates are extremely rare and more akin to an honorary title, representing the university’s acknowledgment of someone as embodying the highest research level in a specific field.

Precisely because of this, before the University of London awarded Arthur the Doctor of Natural Philosophy title, there were only three types of doctorate titles in Britain: theology, law, and medicine. Those who obtained these doctorate titles were typically seasoned professionals who had immersed themselves in their fields for decades.

If it weren’t for King William IV urgently needing Arthur to assume the role of Supervisor at the University of Gottingen, it’s likely he wouldn’t have tacitly approved the University of London’s special arrangement to place such an absurd hat of a Doctor of Natural Philosophy on Arthur’s head.

Of course, nowadays, the University of London’s education system, reformed comprehensively by Sir Arthur, has begun to align fully with that of the German universities, allowing both master’s and doctorate degrees to be earned normally upon passing academic assessments.

However, it is really difficult for us to speculate whether Sir Arthur did this for the sake of the school’s development or to make his unique Doctor of Natural Philosophy title appear less ridiculous.

Perhaps it was both?

Perhaps it was only one?

The human heart is a mysterious thing, and I dare not make presumptuous assumptions.

But in any event, Sir Arthur’s short but immensely significant term as Dean of Academic Affairs provided this new-age university with unprecedented development opportunities.

This was not only reflected in the educational reforms he implemented at the University of London but also in his recruitment of a large number of excellent professors from the University of Gottingen to the University of London. However, most importantly, he brought to the University of London the Hastings College, which provided a stable student source and teaching funding.