UK universities are often grouped into categories reflecting phases of expansion.
These include the Ancient universities (pre-1800), Civic, or ‘Redbrick’ institutions (c.1800); early modern or Civic ‘Whitetile’ instituions (c.1900-1930s); Advanced Colleges of Technology (late 1950s), and the New (Plateglass) Universities (1960s).
The term Plateglass has since been used more broadly to describe universities who received their Royal Charters during the 1960s, originally popularised by Michael Beloff, an English barrister and former President of Trinity College, Oxford. In The Plateglass Universities Beloff applied the term to seven newly created institutions: Sussex (1961), East Anglia (1963), York (1963), Lancaster (1964), Essex (1964), Kent (1965), and Warwick (1965). These universities were established as a result of policy developments, mainly the Robbins Committee Report (1963) which was established by the UK government to review the sector and make recommendations on the principles that university places should be available to all who were qualified by ability and attainment. The report, alongside phased funding through the University Grants Committee helped drive the sector’s rapid growth and diversification.
Although subsequent scholarship has sometimes expanded or adapted the term, Plateglass, (often to include the group of Colleges of Advanced Technology), Beloff’s original discussion and phrasing focused on the seven institutions as a distinct group, emphasising their educational ambition, campus planning and architecture.