1.B For the following statements indicate one or several names or types of universities and colleges, mentioned in the text above.

1. The first university to admit women was________________________.

2. The universities that appeared in the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth are called ________________________.

3. Universities famous for their personal tuition system are________________.

4. The most famous institution of distance learning in Great Britain is _______.

5. The term “red-brick” is used to refer to these two types of universities: ____________ and ______________.

6. Teaching qualifications are most commonly provided _____________ colleges.

7. Glasgow University belongs to ________________________________.

8. The most famous privately financed university is ______________________.

1.C Answer the following questions, suing the information from the text above.

1. By what principles are British universities categorized?

2. Would you favour being a student of a collegiate university? Why?

3. Is the tutorial system a pledge of students' educational success and why? Why has it not been extended to Ukrainian universities?

4. Can the products of such exclusive establishments as Oxford and Cambridge remain closely in touch with the rest of the British population?

5. Would you prefer a broader BA course at a Scottish university or the usual 3-year course in England and Wales and why?

6. What's your opinion of non-compulsory attendance of lectures at Oxbridge?

7. Was the upgrading of former technical colleges to polytechnical universities an imperative necessity to Britain? What were the reasons for a similar reform in Ukraine?

8. Are their any benefits of being a student of a privately financed university?

2.A Read the article below and do the exercises that follow. University: Is It a Good Deal?

It seems an opportune moment to ask what lies ahead for students in Britain's fast-changing universities: will the experiences, the quality of education and the job prospects of today's undergraduates be as good as those of their parent's generation?

Twenty years ago just one young person in eight entered higher education. Today more than one in three do so.

Over the same period the number of undergraduate degrees awarded in Britain has risen from just over 100,000 a year to over 260,000.

That does not mean that the quality of a degree is necessarily any the less but it does mean a university degree is no longer as distinctive a qualification as it once was.

But the economy has also moved on and the demand for graduates has grown at the same time as the supply has increased.

If the growth over the past 20 years has been rapid, the expansion since the first big explosion of university growth in the mid-1960s is even more dramatic. In 1965 just over 400,000 students studied at British universities. Today the figure is 1.8 million.

In the 1960s, undergraduates were predominantly white, male, under-21 year-olds who studied full-time. Today 55% of them are women. Indeed female undergraduates overtook men 5 years ago and have continued to pull ahead ever since.

Although the under-21 age group still provides the majority of first degree students, mature entrants are now a significant minority, totalling almost one in five of this year's' freshers. More than a quarter of all students now study part-time.

In short, we have seen a shift from a university system serving a small elite to one that is now closer to the mass university systems of the USA or many continental European countries.

At the same time, the university experience has gone from a five-star, luxury design to a mass-transit economy model.

Nothing reveals this more starkly than the amount of public money spent per student. This has fallen from over £7,500 just over a decade ago to around £4,800 today.

The result is that most of today's students receive no grants to cover living costs, about half must pay something towards their tuition costs, and all face more crowded lecture theatres and less individual time with staff.

But before despair engulfs anyone starting out on courses, let me give you some good news too. It may cost you more, and you will probably graduate with £10,000 or more of personal debt, but your degree should enhance your job prospects and your earning capacity.

The figures suggest that graduates aged between 30 and 44 earn 76% more than non-graduates in the UK.

And even those whose parental income is high enough to require them to pay fees are, in one sense, getting a good deal.

However, there is one important way in which universities have not changed as much as many expected: they remain largely the preserve of the sons and daughters of the middle-classes.

Over 70% of the children of professional classes now attend university compared to just 13% of children of unskilled workers.

University leaders blame the schools for this, arguing that they can only admit young people with suitable qualifications.

The other big change in universities today is the arrival of the new, two-year Foundation Degrees which are intended to deliver further expansion in higher education.

The model is based on the USA where many students take two-year degrees at community colleges. Many then go on to take the full four-year bachelor's degree.

Amid all this change the really pressing issue for students is whether some leading universities will get their way and be allowed to introduce "top-up fees" (or market-rate fees, as they prefer to call them) for more prestigious degree courses.

The top university leaders say the change is needed if they are to remain competitive with wealthier, especially American, universities.

These are bumpy, transitional years for higher education as the system attempts to adapt from serving 15% of young people to 50%.

Students will continue to wonder whether they are getting a good deal, but future employment patterns suggest they are almost certainly better off investing in a degree.

Moreover, by the time today's undergraduates are parents themselves they will probably look back nostalgically to the days when getting a university degree was cheap and graduating still helped you stand out from the crowd.