In 1868 Thomas Huxley produced his essay A Liberal Education, and where to find it. Not at Oxford and Cambridge apparently. Huxley dismissed both as “simply "boarding schools” for bigger boys". British universities, he argued, must embrace research as the basis of great university education. At present, he lamented “a third rate German university turns out more produce of that kind…in one year, than our vast and wealthy foundations elaborate in ten”.

As John Stuart Mill would tell graduates at St Andrew’s University in 1867, until recently the old English universities "seemed to exist mainly for the repression of independent thought, and the chaining up of the individual intellect and conscience”.