2020 is the 120th anniversary of the University of Birmingham.
And the 25th of May is its birthday.
It's the date on which in 1900, Queen Victoria gave royal assent to the Birmingham University
Act, when the University's Court of Governors met for the first time 6 days later wrote
that it welcomed the University 'as an institution which presents some point of difference from
any university that has hitherto existed on English soil.
An experiment of the very highest interests to the future of the university organisation
in this country'.
So the University of Birmingham was going to be different.
Its champion and founder, the former Lord Mayor of Birmingham and the Cabinet Minister,
Joseph Chamberlain said it would be redolent of the soil and inspired by the associations
of which it exists.
Starting with the existing colleges in Birmingham he raised the equivalent of about £30m today
from a single pound or two pounds donations from members of the Birmingham public, from
the takings of the Birmingham Empire special performances, all the way up to large benefactions
from local magnates and supporters from abroad like Andrew Carnegie.
The University of Birmingham was going to be different.
In three ways.
It was going to be a civic university, it was
going to be an ambitious university and it was going to be a global university.
Being a civic university meant drawing upon and serving the community outside
the university.
The first chairs the University were endowed by local
supporters and the professors who filled them were practitioners in their field.
Elgar, Sir Edward Elgar, the renowned composer for example was procured as the
first professor of music with the support of a local manufacturing chemist.
The curriculum of the University similarly reflected the commitment to
engage with local employers and to prepare people for work.
The university was the first one to incorporate a
medical school, it taught dentistry, it was the first
University to have a School of Commerce.
It split engineering into its mechanical and chemical and electrical
and later oil branches.
It had a School of Mining with its own model mine whose
first professor went off to be the first inspector of mines for the British
government and perhaps most controversially
it had a school of brewing and malting paid for by the Birmingham and Midlands
Wholesale Brewers Association which ran its own distillery.
This tradition has continued since with the support of
the Lucas electrical component manufacturers with
the Lucas Institute and today we have the the West Midlands Redi
which has generated 11 million pounds for sustainable inclusive employment
projects in the West Midlands since 2015, we
have had large philanthropic contributions to the expansion of the
university's facilities including the Bifor Environmental Research Institute the
Bramall performance space, the Alan Walters Business School and the Cadbury
Research Library.
The University also continues its tradition of recruiting
and supporting students from the West Midlands initially of course that was
it's a natural recruitment base but today recruiting from all around the
world it nonetheless pioneered a project to encourage
applications and access to the University from able students from the
West Midlands, from the least represented backgrounds in higher education.
The new university chose a new motto - per ardua ad
alta.
This meant that the University was keen to stress it was not just about
work, work was for a purpose, the purpose of reaching the heights.
The University wanted to show its ambition, it did this
first with a stunning campus development at Bournbrook, the Edgbaston campus we
now know today, but it continued in the development of its curriculum to see
that the work that was being done was being done in a context of a rounded
liberal University environment.
Charles Graham Robertson the man who established
the Law department for example said we're not training scriveners we are
making lawyers, The University's alumni are in some ways testament to the ambition
with which it carried on its work. It's produced award-winning directors and actors. It's produced prime
ministers and Generals and national representatives in sports ranging from
athletics to rugby to football to cricket and interestingly key members of
the gold medal winning teams at the last Olympics in hockey and cycling.
It's that ambition and the facilities which the
University develops in order to make it possible to be fulfilled that won the
University The Sunday Times University of the Year award and
continues to keep it in comfortably in the top 20 of any national league table
you care to look at and the top hundred of any around the world.
From its foundation the University of Birmingham
has had a global dimension.
Although it reached deeper into West Midlands
society in its engagement than in any other university it also reached more
broadly across the globe to enrich its life.
A student who was at the University of 1915, had come from Warwick was
encouraging her former schoolmates to join the
University wrote that a feature strikes one at once at the university is
the cosmopolitan character of the students.
They are men and women of all nationalities brothers and sisters in
learning from all parts of the world of all ages and degree.
Today Birmingham has 5,000 international students from 150
different countries and it sends 500 of its own students on a study abroad
programs to 270 other destinations in in every continent of the world.
It has representatives permanently in China
India the United States and its own campus in Dubai.
One of the key features of the University's history has been is
readiness to respond to international crisis and challenge - acting as a
hospital in the First World War, developing a radar for the defence of
the Allies in the Second World War and of course taking part in the response to
our current public health crisis.
Even a man with the imagination of Joseph
Chamberlain couldn't possibly foresee the changes that have taken place in the
University and in the world around it in the hundred twenty years since its birthday.
He started with an institution of fewer than a thousand students, Birmingham with
over 35,000 is now one of the largest in the country.
However the characteristics that he and the other founders gave the University
at the time of its birth have stayed with it and make it unique today.
One of Chamberlain's successors as Lord Mayor
of Birmingham wrote recently that he could imagine Chamberlain enjoying
listening to how his baby had grown to take its place in the Premier League of
universities.
It's been 120 years of dramatic change, it's been a period of
fantastic achievement for the University let's say a Happy Birthday to the
University of Birmingham but let's say Many Many Happy Returns.
If you want to know more about the
University of Birmingham's history look at its website and if you'd like to
contribute to the writing of this history which I'm undertaking at the
moment please email me at the university I'll be delighted to hear from you and
I'd be delighted to tell you more about the University as the project proceeds.