Post by Anna Hatt

Access to university education – a family story University College London is celebrating its 200th anniversary. It was the first UK university open to applicants regardless of race, class or religion. In 1878 it became the first UK university to admit women in all faculties except medicine. That is not so long ago. In my family, which has an unusually long history of women going to university, it is four generations. In the 1880s, my grandmother’s aunt, the Australian writer Mary Gaunt, was one of the first two women admitted to Melbourne University. My grandmother, influenced by her aunt and against the wishes of her mother, studied at Oxford University in the 1930s. At that time, women were entitled to take degrees there, but not at Cambridge University. My mother studied medicine at University College Hospital in the early 1970s. She was turned down by another London teaching hospital because it had filled its small quota for female medical students. I graduated in 2000, the first generation to have equal access to university education. We have come a long way. There is still a lot to do on other aspects of diversity. Thank you to UCL for making a start! https://lnkd.in/e3Dq2d8k