Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dboreham 1410 days ago
> Who thought of the name "University College"?

Whoever wanted to disambiguate vs Kings College in 1836 presumably.

2 comments

This. University College London is the product of the early 19th century and the Benthamite secular education movement. Jeremy is in a glass case in the foyer. At the time, degrees in colleges at Oxford and Cambridge demanded adherence to the 39 articles of the Anglican faith.

Birkbeck college which is also a constituent of the university of london (like UCL) is a contemporary and focussed on technical education for working people, with teaching at night so they could both work, and study. It also has Jeremy Bentham in it's DNA.

(worked at UCL in the 80s. my mum went to the slade school of art there in the 1940s. its a great place)

> Jeremy is in a glass case in the foyer

Well I’ll be damned… they actually put his remains on display. How gruesome.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/philosophers-dress...

At least one pub had a spare head. I feel this is a lot like Uberto Eco name of the rose "the reliquary included the head of John the baptist: as a child and as an adult"
His skeleton is in there, too.
To expand this:

ancient times - Oxford and Cambridge universities come into being, composed of multiple independent and mostly equivalent colleges (ie all teaching the full range of subjects)

1826 - London University founded

1829 - King's College founded

1836 - London University and King's College combine to form the University of London, comprising two colleges roughly on the Oxbridge model; London University is renamed to University College

University College may be a silly name, but what else would they have called it? London College? Hardly better.

Note that University College, Oxford and University College Dublin are called that for completely different reasons.