Durham University in the context of "Formal (university)"

The third-oldest university in England debate has been carried out since the mid-19th century, with rival claims being made originally by Durham University as the third-oldest officially recognised university (1832) and the third to confer degrees (1837) and the University of London as the third university to be granted a royal charter (1836). These have been joined more recently by University College London as it was founded as London University (1826) and was the third-oldest university institution to start teaching (1828) and by King's College London (which officially claims to be the fourth-oldest university in England but is claimed by some students to be the third-oldest as the third university institution to receive a royal charter, in 1829). Most historians identify Durham as the third-oldest, following standard practice in how a university is defined and how this is applied historically, although the popular press is more divided.

In the United Kingdom, a post-1992 university, synonymous with new university or modern university, is a former polytechnic or central institution that was given university status through the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, or an institution that has been granted university status since 1992 without receiving a royal charter. This is used in contrast to "pre-1992" universities.

The term "new universities" was historically used to refer to universities that were at the time new. In the mid-19th century, it was used in England to distinguish the recently established universities of Durham and London from the "old universities" of Oxford and Cambridge. In the early 20th century, the term was applied to the civic universities that had recently gained university status, such as Bristol and others (now known as red brick universities). The term was later used to refer to universities gaining their status in the 1960s, such as the former colleges of advanced technology, which were converted to universities following the 1963 Robbins Report on higher education, and the plate glass universities, which were already in the process of being established at the time of the report.

The N8 Research Partnership is a partnership created in 2006 of the eight most research-intensive universities in Northern England – Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York. The N8 Research Partnership aims to maximise the impact of this research base by identifying and co-ordinating powerful research teams and collaborations across the North of England. Collectively, the N8 universities undertake more than £650 million of research income per annum and employ over 18,000 academic staff. The N8 Research Partnership also works closely with industry.

George Macaulay Trevelyan OM CBE FRS FBA (16 February 1876 – 21 July 1962) was an English historian and academic. He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1898 to 1903. He then spent more than twenty years as a full-time author. He returned to the University of Cambridge and was Regius Professor of History from 1927 to 1943. He served as Master of Trinity College from 1940 to 1951. In retirement, he was Chancellor of Durham University.

Trevelyan was the third son of Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, and great-nephew of Thomas Babington Macaulay. He espoused Macaulay's staunch liberal Whig principles in accessible works of literate narrative unfettered by scholarly neutrality, his style becoming old-fashioned in the course of his long and productive career. The historian E. H. Carr considered Trevelyan to be one of the last historians of the Whig tradition.

Town and gown are two distinct communities of a university town; 'town' being the non-academic population and 'gown' metonymically being the university community, especially in ancient seats of learning such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and St Andrews, although the term is also used to describe modern university towns as well as towns with a significant public school. The metaphor is historical in its connotation but continues to be used in the literature on urban higher education and in common parlance.

A common room is a group into which students (and sometimes the academic body) are organised in some universities, particularly in the United Kingdom, normally in a subdivision of the university such as a college or hall of residence, in addition to an institution-wide students' union. They represent their members within the hall or college, operate certain services within these institutions such as laundry or recreation, and provide opportunities for socialising. There are variations based on institutional tradition and needs, but classically the following common rooms will exist:

• A junior common room (JCR) – for undergraduate students
• A middle common room (MCR) – for post-graduate students (in colleges with a large number of post-graduate students)
• A senior common room (SCR) – for academic members of the college

Common rooms are particularly found at collegiate universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, York and Lancaster, but can also be found (often only the JCR) at non-collegiate universities, where they are normally associated with halls of residence. A significant difference between colleges and halls of residence generally is that students continue to be members of a college when not resident in the college; thus college JCRs serve all students who are members of the college, whether or not they live in college accommodation, while hall JCRs serve only residents of that hall.

Colleges within universities in the United Kingdom can be divided into two broad categories: those in federal universities such as the University of London, which are primarily teaching institutions joined in a federation, and residential colleges in universities following (to a greater or lesser extent) the traditional collegiate pattern of Oxford and Cambridge, which may have academic responsibilities but are primarily residential and social. The legal status of colleges varies widely, both with regard to their corporate status and their status as educational bodies. London colleges are all considered 'recognised bodies' with the power to confer University of London degrees and, in many cases, their own degrees. Colleges of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) are listed bodies, as "bodies that appear to the Secretary of State to be constituent colleges, schools, halls or other institutions of a university". Colleges of the plate glass universities of Kent, Lancaster and York, along with those of the University of Roehampton and the University of the Arts London do not have this legal recognition. Colleges of Oxford (with three exceptions), Cambridge, London, and UHI, and the recognised colleges of Durham, are separate corporations, while the colleges of other universities, the maintained colleges of Durham, and the societies of the university at Oxford are parts of their parent universities and do not have independent corporate existence.

In the past, many of what are now British universities with their own degree-awarding powers were colleges which had their degrees awarded by either a federal university (such as Cardiff University) or validated by another university (for example many of the post-1992 universities). Colleges that had (or have) courses validated by a university are not normally considered to be colleges of that university; similarly the redbrick universities that, as university colleges, prepared students for University of London external degrees were not considered colleges of that university. Some universities (e.g. Cardiff University) refer to their academic faculties as "colleges"; such purely academic subdivisions are not within the scope of this article.

In some countries, certain universities have a formal tradition of pairing their residential colleges or houses with one another. Colleges that are paired are referred to as sister colleges, and have an academic, ceremonial, and symbolic relation to each other. Some notable pairs include:

• Harvard University and Yale University

• University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and University of Dublin

• University of York and Durham University

Students belonging to one college can often find accommodation and hospitality at their sister college should they be visiting the other university; this is especially relevant to Harvard and Yale students during the annual Harvard-Yale football rivalry. The universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin have similarly maintained an academic relationship for several centuries.