A New History of Higher Education in the Capital
Portico Magazine | Summer 2026
What was it like to be a student in London?
The answer has changed a lot over the years.
Drawing on their new book, Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital, Professor Georgina Brewis and Dr Sam Blaxland shed light on 200 years of student life at UCL.
Although UCL was founded in February 1826, the first students did not arrive at the self-styled London University until October 1828. Free from the religious tests and residential requirements of Oxford and Cambridge, this new university offered a reasonably priced, ‘useful’ education, appealing to students from across the world even in its early years.
These first students forged their own traditions, starting clubs and societies, experimenting with student journalism and enjoying all that the capital had to offer, from boating on the river to its buzzing taverns and playhouses. When the degree-awarding University of London was created by the government in 1836, the original institution was renamed University College London.
The admission of women
The admission of women to university education was arguably the most significant change to student life in London in the second half of the nineteenth century. Women were admitted to UCL in stages from the 1860s and were able to sit for University of London degrees from 1878.
However, social activities were organised on segregated gender lines, with separate men’s and women’s students’ unions – something that lasted until 1946! Women were also denied access to the Faculty of Medicine, leading to the formation of the London School of Medicine for Women. Relationships between unmarried men and women were highly policed until well into the twentieth century – for instance, students could be suspended for ‘idleness and going about with men’.
A new century
By 1900, the capital was very different to the city in which UCL had been founded – it was a modern financial centre that lay at the heart of the world’s largest empire. Students embraced this modernity and were early adopters of technical innovations including bicycles and electric lighting.
In these years, the expansion of local authority financial support broadened the base of those able to study at university, with the London Day Training College providing a route for people from more modest backgrounds to earn a degree.
In a sign of the liberalising social attitudes that marked Bloomsbury, London’s universities and colleges provided spaces where homosexuality, while rarely openly discussed, was tolerated. Long-term partnerships between medical and academic women, for instance, could be accepted as alternatives to marriage.
War and peace
WWI (1914–18) changed student life in London forever – by 1917, 20,000 University of London men, including current and former students, were serving in the armed forces – around 1,700 of whom were killed in action.
London’s women students played their part as doctors, nurses, munitions workers, agricultural labourers and in other forms of war work. The colleges became sites of mourning, with photographic displays of the fallen hung in corridors and cloisters. Armistice prompted a rush of students back to the classroom, but London’s colleges and medical schools struggled with financial deficits, inflation, overcrowding and the influenza pandemic of 1918–19.
After the war, students embraced the greater social mixing permitted between men and women and enjoyed the capital’s vibrant night-time economy of dance halls, cinemas, theatres and nightclubs.
However, in the 1930s, student life played out against a backdrop of domestic and international crises including the rise of fascism in Europe. Yet, like young people before and after, even amid the worst crises of the decade students were always able to cast aside ‘the gloom which hung over most people like a cloud’ for an evening of dancing.
The international student body shaped Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia as Chinese and Indian restaurants sprang up to cater for diverse tastes. The end of the decade was to see students scattered across the country as part of the wartime evacuation.
Austerity London
After WWII (1939-1945) students overcame the harsh conditions of austerity Britain not simply by muddling through, but by actively getting involved in reconstruction efforts, campaigning for public health initiatives, forming hardship schemes and rebuilding student culture.
In London, students threw themselves into staging plays and comedy revues, writing – despite paper rationing – for a range of newspapers and magazines, and playing sport on UCL’s new ground at Shenley.
The 1940s saw big changes to medical education, with the male-only Middlesex admitting its first women and the Royal Free Hospital Medical School beginning to welcome men. Strict rules continued to govern the relationships between men and women. Visiting hours in halls of residence were tightly controlled, and private landladies rarely allowed men over their thresholds to visit female lodgers.
The swinging sixties and beyond
Much of that was to change as a cultural revolution swept through Britain from the mid-1960s – and nowhere was this felt more strongly than in London. This was reflected in teaching across the University of London – including the introduction of new disciplines such as computer science and a building boom in lecture theatres, labs, halls of residence, and students’ unions.
The changes went hand in hand with social liberation and progressive values. Not all students were carried away by the changing tide, but many were. London was an exciting place during the anti-war protests of the late 1960s, and the emergence of the gay and women’s liberation movements in the early 1970s.
Indeed, London students helped shift the dial on big social and political questions – for example UCL’s Gay Society was one of the very first organisations of its kind in any UK university. A strong anti-Apartheid movement across colleges found expression in practical initiatives including scholarships for Black South Africans.
Lights will guide you home: The 1980s and 1990s
Into the 1980s, students were often at the forefront of other social issues. Medical students, in particular, were drawn into the unfolding AIDs crisis.
It was also in this period that the darker, edgier side of the capital was often on display. London students might be mugged, choose squatting as a cheap living solution, witness the infamous Brixton riots, raise funds for striking coal miners, while also engaging with a new music and nightclub scene that was fuelled by drugs and alcohol.
There was a general feeling, however, that the mid and late 1990s was a better time than many others in which to be a student, due to a growing economy and lively music scene. During this time, UCL’s student body included some of our institution’s most well-known alumni: the members of Coldplay.
Whether or not the refrain ‘lights will guide you home’ from the single Fix You was in fact written about the BT Tower, it certainly acted as a navigational beacon to help the band’s members and many other students find their way back to UCL’s Ramsay Hall after a night out.
UCL’s status and size was enhanced by mergers with other institutions across this period. Medical education at UCL went from strength to strength with the unions of the Middlesex Hospital Medical School and the Royal Free Hospital Medical School and long-established traditions of music, comedy and sports found new life under the banner of RUMS. In the 2010s, the School of Pharmacy and Institute of Education were to join a thriving multi-faculty institution, particularly enhancing UCL’s postgraduate research community.
The next 200 years?
What does the future of student life in London hold? Many challenges are set to remain – from financial barriers to political challenges to the impact of AI. But, if the last 200 years represent any sort of indicator of the future, then London will continue to be one of the most dynamic, exciting and challenging places in which to be a student.
About the book
Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital is the major outcome of a research and engagement project called ‘Generation UCL: Two Hundred Years of Student Life in London’, which ran between 2021 and 2026. This was a partnership between academic historians based at UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and Students’ Union UCL and was supported by UCL’s Office of the Vice President Advancement.
The book is available to download and read for free or it can be bought as a hard copy for the special price of £20.
To recover student life in London over nearly 200 years, we read official records with new eyes and set these alongside society records, student newspapers, personal scrapbooks, diaries, letters, event posters and student clothing. We consulted more than 300 student memoirs and recorded interviews with 92 alumni.
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