Vocabulary. Task 1. Read the text and answer the questions:

Task 1. Read the text and answer the questions:

1. What are the most famous universities of England?

2. What is the difference between further and higher education?

3. Which degrees can a student get?

4. What are the types of higher educational establishments?

5. When were the most famous English universities founded?

Further education has traditionally been characterized by part-time vocational courses for those who leave school at the age of 16 but need to acquire a skill, be that in the manual, technical or clerical field. Lots of students enroll each year in part-time courses at further education (FE) colleges, some released by their employers and a great number of unemployed.

Higher education in the UK is represented by five types of the establishments: the medieval English foundations, the medieval Scottish ones, the nineteenth-century “redbrick” ones, and finally the previous polytechnics. They are all private institutions, receiving direct grants from central government.

Oxford and Cambridge, founded in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respectively, are easily the most famous of Britain’s universities. Today “Oxbridge", as the two together are known, educate less than one-twentieth of Britain’s total university student’s population. But they continue to attract many of the best brains.

Scotland boasts four universities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen, all founded in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In the nineteenth century more universities were established to respond to the greatly increased demand for educated people as the result of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of Britain’s overseas empire. Many of these were sited in the industrial centres, for example Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol.

Nowadays there is also a highly successful Open University, which provides every person in Britain with the opportunity to study for a degree, without leaving their home. It is particularly designed for adults who missed the opportunity for higher education earlier in life. It conducts learning through correspondence, radio and television, and also through local study centres.

University examinations are for Bachelor of Arts or of Science (BA or BSc) on the completion of the undergraduate course, and Master of Arts or of Science (MA or MSc) on completion of postgraduate work, usually a one- or two-year course involving some original research. Some students continue to complete a three year period of original research for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).