UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
From the SecondWorldWar to the present day
By the time war broke out in September 1939, the University had 14,000 registered students. The Colleges and their students were forced into exile in other parts of the UK and Senate House was taken over by the Ministry of Information – the roof becoming a valuable observation point for the Royal Observatory Corp. By 1944, the Colleges began to return to London and exams again took place in the capital. The Principal of the University reported that the exams were carried out ‘without casualties, other than those normally caused by these exacting but essential tests’. In 1948, Lillian Penson was elected as the University’s 31st Vice-Chancellor, the first women to hold this post in a Commonwealth University. During the 1960s and 1970s the number of students going to university in the UK expanded enormously. In line with this, the total number of internal students at the University of London doubled to almost 54,000 by 1981. In 1981 Princess Anne, The Princess Royal succeeded the Queen Mother as the University’s 10th Chancellor. In the 1990s, many of the University’s central responsibilities were devolved to the Colleges. The Funding Council also began to fund the Colleges directly. The University continues to grow and evolve to reflect the changing times. In 2008 it introduced a streamlined, transparent and flexible system of governance headed by a Board of Trustees with a lay majority.
Today – as it has been throughout its long history – the University is a family of world-class institutions, collectively upholding its international reputation of academic distinction in teaching and research.
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