The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University, or simply Cambridge) is the second oldest university in England and the seventh oldest in the world

The University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge (informally Cambridge University, or simply Cambridge) is the second oldest university in England and the seventh oldest in the world. In post-nominals the university's name is abbreviated as Cantab, a shortened form of Cantabrigiensis (an adjective derived from Cantabrigia, the Latinised form of Cambridge).

Cambridge’s status was enhanced by a charter in 1231 from King Henry III of England which awarded the ius non trahi extra (a right to discipline its own members) plus some exemption from taxes, and a bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX that gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach everywhere in Christendom.[citation needed]
After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter by Pope Nicholas IV in 1290, and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318, it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to come and visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.[citation needed]
(centre), built between 1441 and 1515.
Foundation of the colleges
Cambridge’s colleges were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments, called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries, but they have left some indicators of their time, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse in 1284, Cambridge’s first college. Many colleges were founded during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but colleges continued to be established throughout the centuries to modern times, although there was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson, built in the late 1970s. However, Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010, making it the newest full college (it was previously an "Approved Society" affiliated with the university).
In medieval times, colleges were founded so that their students would pray for the souls of the founders. For that reason they were often associated with chapels or abbeys. A change in the colleges’ focus occurred in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. King Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching “scholastic philosophy”. In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics, the Bible, and mathematics.
As Cambridge moved away from Canon Law so too did it move away from Catholicism. As early as the 1520s, the continental rumblings of Lutheranism and what was to become more broadly known as the Protestant Reformation were making their presence felt in the intellectual discourse of the university. Among the intellectuals involved was the theologically influential Thomas Cranmer, later to become Archbishop of Canterbury. As it became convenient to Henry VIII in the 1530s, the King looked to Cranmer and others (within and without Cambridge) to craft a new religious path that was wholly different from Catholicism yet also different from what Martin Luther had in mind.
Nearly a century later, the university was at the centre of another Christian schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even common folk saw the ways of the Church of England as being all too similar to the Catholic Church and moreover that it was used by the crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement and at Cambridge, it was particularly strong at Emmanuel, St. Catherine’s Hall, Sidney Sussex and Christ’s College.[12] They produced many “non-conformist” graduates who greatly influenced, by social position or pulpit, the approximately 20,000 Puritans who left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649-1660), attended Sidney Sussex.
Women's education
Initially, only male students were enrolled into the university. The first colleges for women were Girton College (founded by Emily Davies) in 1869 and Newnham College in 1872 (founded by Anne Clough and Henry Sidgwick), followed by Hughes Hall in 1885 (founded by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as the Cambridge Teaching College for Women), New Hall (later renamed Murray Edwards College) in 1954, and Lucy Cavendish College. The first women students were examined in 1882 but attempts to make women full members of the university did not succeed until 1947. Although Cambridge did not give degrees to women until 1921, women were in fact allowed to study courses, sit examinations, and have their results recorded from 1881; for a brief period after the turn of the twentieth century, this allowed the "steamboat ladies" to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin.
Later, women could be given a "titular degree"; although they were not denied recognised qualifications, without a full degree they were excluded from the governing of the university. Since students must belong to a college, and since established colleges remained closed to women, women found admissions restricted to colleges established only for women. Starting with Churchill College, all of the men's colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. One women's college, Girton, also began to admit male students from 1979, but the other women's colleges did not follow suit. As a result of St Hilda's College, Oxford, ending its ban on male students in 2008, Cambridge is now the only remaining United Kingdom University with colleges which refuse to admit males, with three such institutions (Newnham, Murray Edwards and Lucy Cavendish).[14]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-14"[15]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-15"[16] In the academic year 2004–5, the university’s student gender ratio, including post-graduates, was male 52%: female 48%.[17]
Schools, faculties and departments
In addition to the 31 colleges, the university is made up of over 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates and other institutions. Members of these are usually also members of one or more of the colleges and responsibility for running the entire academic programme of the university is divided amongst them.
A 'School' in the University of Cambridge is a broad administrative grouping of related faculties and other units. Each has an elected supervisory body – the 'Council' of the school – comprising representatives of the constituent bodies. There are six schools:[28]

• 
  Arts and Humanities
  
• 
  Biological Sciences
  
• 
  Clinical Medicine
  
• 
  Humanities and Social Sciences
  
• 
  Physical Sciences
  
• 
  Technology
  

Teaching and research in Cambridge is organised by faculties. The faculties have different organisational sub-structures which partly reflect their history and partly their operational needs, which may include a number of departments and other institutions. In addition, a small number of bodies entitled 'Syndicates' have responsibilities for teaching and research, e.g. Cambridge Assessment, the University Press, and the University Library.
Academic year
The academic year is divided into three terms, determined by the Statutes of the University.[29] Michaelmas Term lasts from October to December; Lent Term from January to March; and Easter Term from April to June.
Within these terms undergraduate teaching takes place within eight-week periods called Full Terms. These terms are shorter than those of many other British universities.[30] Undergraduates are also expected to prepare heavily in the three holidays (known as the Christmas, Easter and Long Vacations).
Central administration
Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor
The current Chancellor of the University is the Duke of Edinburgh. The current Vice-Chancellor is Alison Richard. The office of Chancellor, which is held for life, is mainly ceremonial, while the Vice-Chancellor is de facto the principal academic and administrative officer. The University's internal governance is carried out almost entirely by its own members,[31] with very little external representation on its governing body, the Regent House (though there is external representation on the Audit Committee, and there are four external members on the University's Council, who are the only external members of the Regent House).[32]
Senate and the Regent House
The Senate consists of all holders of the MA degree or higher degrees. It elects the Chancellor and the High Steward, and elected two members of the House of Commons until the Cambridge University constituency was abolished in 1950. Prior to 1926, it was the University's governing body, fulfilling the functions that the Regent House fulfils today.[citation needed]
The Regent House is the University's governing body, a direct democracy comprising all resident senior members of the University and the Colleges, together with the Chancellor, the High Steward, the Deputy High Steward, and the Commissary.[33] The public representatives of the Regent House are the two Proctors, elected to serve for one year, on the nomination of the Colleges.
Council and the General Board
Although the University Council is the principal executive and policy-making body of the University, therefore, it must report and be accountable to the Regent House through a variety of checks and balances. It has the right of reporting to the University, and is obliged to advise the Regent House on matters of general concern to the University. It does both of these by causing notices to be published by authority in the Cambridge University Reporter, the official journal of the University. Since January 2005, the membership of the Council has included two external members,[34] and the Regent House voted for an increase from two to four in the number of external members in March 2008,[35]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-35"[36] and this was approved by Her Majesty the Queen in July 2008.[37]
The General Board of the Faculties is responsible for the academic and educational policy of the University,[38] and is accountable to the Council for its management of these affairs.
Faculty Boards are responsible to the General Board; other Boards and Syndicates are responsible either to the General Board (if primarily for academic purposes) or to the Council. In this way, the various arms of the University are kept under the supervision of the central administration, and thus the Regent House.
Finances
In late 2006, the total financial endowment of the university and the colleges was estimated at Ј4.1 billion (US$8.2 billion): Ј1.2 billion tied directly to the university, Ј2.9 billion to the colleges.[39] Oxford (including its colleges) is possibly ranked second, having reported an endowment valued at Ј3.9bn in mid-2006.[40] Each college is an independent charitable institution with its own endowment, separate from that of the central university endowment.
If ranked on a US university endowment table using figures reported in 2006, Cambridge would rank sixth or seventh (depending on whether one includes the University of Texas System – which incorporates nine full scale universities and six health institutions), or fourth in a ranking compared with only the eight Ivy League institutions.[41]
Comparisons between Cambridge's endowment and those of other top US universities are, however, inaccurate because being a state-funded public university, Cambridge receives a major portion of its income through education and research grants from the British Government. In 2006, it was reported that approximately one third of Cambridge’s income comes from UK government funding for teaching and research, with another third coming from other research grants. Endowment income contributes around 6%.[42]
In 2000, Bill Gates of Microsoft donated US$210 million through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to endow the Gates Scholarships for students from outside the UK seeking postgraduate study at Cambridge.[43] The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, which taught the world’s first computing course in 1953, is housed in a building partly funded by Gates and named after his father, William Gates.[citation needed]
In 2005, the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign was launched, aimed at raising Ј1 billion by 2012 – the first US-style university fund-raising campaign in Europe. Ј940 million of funds have been secured to date.[44]