red brick university

• redbrick university

From the memoir Redbrick University by Edgar Allison Peers, whose titular university is based on the University of Liverpool. Liverpool, like most urban universities of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, extensively uses red clay bricks in its architecture.

red brick university (plural red brick universities)

1. (British) Any traditional British university other than Oxford or Cambridge, especially one founded in the Victorian age in a large city.
   • 2006 March 31, Adrian Turpin, “Not tonight darling, I'm online”, in Financial Times‎, retrieved March 31, 2006:

     It took a while before he told me his background: a happy childhood; two degrees—a bachelor's from a red brick university and an Oxbridge PhD; a relatively high-flying job in academia that he liked rather than loved.

• Oxbridge
• plate-glass university