What is "red brick university"

alt. (context British English) any traditional British university other than Oxford or Cambridge, especially one founded in the Victorian age in a large city n. (context British English) any traditional British university other than Oxford or Cambridge, especially one founded in the Victorian age in a large city

Red brick university (or redbrick university) is a term originally used to refer to six civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of Great Britain in the 19th century. The term is now used more broadly to refer to British universities founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in major cities. All of the six original redbrick institutions, or their predecessor institutes, gained university status before World War I and were initially established as civic science or engineering colleges.

Whilst the term was originally coined as these institutions were new and thus regarded by the ancient universities as arriviste, the description has since ceased to be derogatory with the 1960s proliferation of universities and the reclassification of polytechnics in 1992. The six institutions are members of the Russell Group (which receives two-thirds of all research grant funding in the United Kingdom).