University in the 19th Century?

This might help:

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hughes/ambrose2.html

It talks about Tom Brown being at Oxford and if you can find the original text, it should be very useful.

I know for sure there was theology and law but not sure about anything else.

This might also be helpful, or at least lead you in the right direction:

http://himetop.wikidot.com/oxford-university-museum-of-natural-history

And you will also need to be aware of the Oxford Movement as they were very influential / notorious at the time.

Try searching the sites of the various colleges. I found this as one example.
http://www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/about/history
And I expect that there is a great deal more.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/about/colleges

Ah yes, that's a good idea. Oxford is more a group of institutions than a single university.

Heres a guide to the univeristy and the town from 1828 (you can download it as a pdf). Might be a place to start

http://books.google.com/books?id=SoAHAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=html_text

You couldn't really study politics as a degree; Law, theology, languages (ancient mostly via Philology or Classics etc.), history, sciences, mathematics, philosophy/logic.

Isn't 21 a little old to be starting University?

21 is about when students today are *leaving* Oxford. Many would be leaving even younger back then.

Ermmmmm.... no. That's not really how it works. Going to Oxford University in the 19th century wasn't just about learning stuff. It was also about the contacts you make and the future you set up for yourself. Going later than everyone else puts you at a disadvantage.

Check out the government and see how many ministers in the last century went to Oxbridge. Then check leaders of big British companies. Loads of them went to Oxbridge. Professors, scientific leaders,... loads. Even certain sports like rowing are full of Oxbridge old boys.

Going to Oxbridge is about a lot more than your education. So yeah, if I was reading your story I would want to know why he waited so long.

You'll probably have to choose a college rather than just saying he went to Oxford. Might be worth finding a biography of someone who would have been a contemporary of your character. There'd be no shortage of them, as mirandashell said.

Then I'm not sure he would be going to Oxford. There were always more applicants than places and an older applicant with no connections would be highly unlikely to get in. If I were you I would pick a different Uni.

Nope. There are other Universities. St Andrews for instance.

If he just wants to gather learning, then one of the other universities would be better: St. Andrews, Glasgow, London, Queens, Wales, etc. Does the character want to learn anything in particular, because some of the universities are better in some realms of knowledge than others.

What's his goal in going to university? In the 1840s, if he's not going for the social networking, unless he's planning to be a scholar, clergyman or MD it's not really a job requirement for anything -- even to be a lawyer didn't require a university degree, you could basically get all the credentials necessary by working as a clerk for a lawyer. Likewise, to go into business of any kind it's connections and/or practical experience that mattered, not formal schooling.

You say he's "expected to learn" -- what does he need to learn that a university setting and a university degree are required? It was entirely possible in the mid-19c for an individual to get all the information and learning he wanted from books, scholarly journals, correspondence with other educated persons, membership in scholarly & scientific societies, etc. -- it was the golden age of the amateur.

The main point of university, aside from professional credentialing in a very limited number of professions, was the social connections and networking it enabled. If that's not what you want for your character, you may want to think twice about sending him there.

Iforgotthis, there wouldn't have been much of a choice of unis in 1848. Wherever you're going to send your character, you'll have to do a lot of research anyway. Why not one of the Scottish unis or Durham for a bit of a change from the usual Oxbridge setting?

I have to agree with Ben. It's far more likely in that time that he would be doing his studies at home. A wealthy family could set up a lab for him if his interests are scientific. If he is more arty, then lessons at home would be provided and he could have as many materials as required.

University was regarded completely differently back then to how it is now. A wealthy man didn't need to go to learn.

If he was going for philosophy, then university would make sense, but everyone is right about university for almost everything else.

A hundred fifty years ago anyone who went through a secondary school had as, or more, much knowledge and understanding of the liberal arts as a university graduate does now, so university education was not especially useful for most purposes.

Iforgotthis said:

However, there seems to be little about which courses the university offered at the time. Will it be fairly similar to now?
Is there anyone who can share some insight on which courses would have been available? It would be greatly appreciated.

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Setting aside the other questions, no, it was not remotely similar to now. In the early 1800s, there was really only a single "degree" at Oxford as we understand it, where most students studied a course of Latin and Greek Literature and theology along with maths and some philosophy and the like. It was a standard course, and a student's college would need to grant him special permission to deviate from it. Medicine was taught for postgraduates, and jurisprudence only on an exceptional basis.

Individual honour schools started to emerge in the middle of the century, but in 1847 there were still only two individual curricular subjects: Literae Humaniores (classics) and Mathematics. Law and history were established as subjects a few years later.

Generally speaking, there were three principal reasons to go to university around the time: to enter the clergy, to prepare for public service, or because you were young and wealthy and that was what young wealthy people did. That doesn't mean individual men mightn't have gone for reasons other than those, but going to university was not something you did on your way to getting a job as it is today (unless that job was in the public service or the church).

It's also true that one did not "go to Oxford", but rather attended a College that was loosely associated with the University.