A brief overview of the University and the town of Cambridge
Cambridge, which is both a university and a town, is a very convoluted proposition. The institution is organic, really; it’s had a lot of time to evolve, though not necessarily in the sense of natural selection, into something increasingly efficient. Instead it’s layered and encrusted with historical legacies (geological, in that sense). I’m by no means an expert on how it all fits together, but I’ve been gradually piecing together the parts that are relevant to navigating the place, and I know that my descriptions of some aspects of Cambridge will be less effective for a non-Cambridge audience without some foundational knowledge. So here are some key things to know about Cambridge, the university, as well as a general overview of the building blocks of Cambridge, the town.
The College System
Wikipedia actually has a pretty good explanation of this, but here’s my summary.
One way to look at the institution of Cambridge is as a giant, decentralized Venn diagram. Except for a very faint outline, there is no one circle that is Cambridge: no central campus, little in terms of university-level administration (though it exists). Instead, most things are mediated through a collection of independently governed colleges. Heard of King’s College? Maybe St. John’s College or Trinity College? There are thirty-one of those, all different, and all with their own leadership, administrative structure, endowments, facilities, and members.
Every student of the University is a member of a particular college, to whom they pay their fees and where they have the option to live (sometimes a requirement for undergrads), eat meals, socialize, and join clubs and sports teams. Colleges are not field-specific, though some have biases toward a particular area, like STEM vs humanities. Lecturers and faculty members, while usually hired by their department (more on that later), are typically affiliated with a college as a Fellow in their field, assigned to mentor undergraduates in their college, which determines which fields constituent undergrads can pursue. Independent researchers can also win Fellowships from colleges, along with the associated teaching duties. Students matriculate into and graduate from their colleges, often with much pomp.
Some colleges have a more niche membership: there are two women-only colleges (including my college, Newnham; a third, Lucy Cavendish, went coed in 2020)—as the other colleges didn’t begin admitting women at all until a staggeringly late 1972—and a few that are graduate-only or mature (over 21) students only. Other than that, a student can join any college, although this happens quite differently for undergraduates and graduates: undergraduates apply directly to a college when they apply to Cambridge, and their admittance to the University hinges on admittance to that college (though I think it’s possible to be shunted to another if not). Graduates, on the other hand, are more at the mercy of their Department for admittance, and can simply state a preference (or not) for a particular college in their application to the University. (In general, the undergraduate experience at Cambridge seems to be more steeped in tradition than the graduate experience, where the research group is the focal point rather than the institution.) Many prospective graduate students, especially international ones like me, have a very foggy idea of what they’re signing up for and choose a college randomly. (I didn’t; I’ll say more about my decision process in a post about Newnham.)
But a student’s choice of college does affect her experience at Cambridge. The colleges are disparate in founding age—the oldest, Peterhouse, in 1284, and the most recently established from scratch, Robinson, in 1977—prestige, endowment (Trinity and St. John’s top the list), size (student numbers range from 150 to 1100), culture, social vibe, facilities and student societies on offer. In some ways, they’re like social clubs or Hogwarts houses—when you meet another Cambridge student, one of the first reflexive items of small talk is to ask what college he or she belongs to, because this helps orient you to where they spend their time, who they may know, what possible shared experiences you may have. Colleges are often known by nicknames which are part of a rich tradition of Cambridge slang floating between colleges. Colleges are nucleuses for events and gatherings attended by both members and non-members—a multitude of committees hosting dance parties, comedy groups holding stand-up nights, student-run bars hosting pub quizzes, musical societies putting on concerts, rowing teams competing on the river, frequent formal dinners (known as formal hall), and annual extravaganzas known as May Balls. The bottom line is, assuming you choose to spend time there, your college can be a source of not only housing, resources, and (importantly) funding, but also identity and community. Whether or not the college system is the most effective way to run a university, they’re permanently woven into the fabric of Cambridge.
Most saliently for this blog, the colleges are also integral to Cambridge’s sense of place. They are a major element of the town mosaic, each with their own buildings, courtyards, walls, gates, porter’s lodges (the gatekeepers), sports pitches. Cambridge residents navigate by them and are impeded by them; streets are named after them; non-college events are hosted in them. Their architecture is as varied as their founding years and social vibes. City-center, riverside colleges, which tend to be the oldest and fanciest, are the most frequented by tourists, but others, like Newnham, are more out of the way and yet still brimming with charm or are distinctive in other ways. My exposure to the inside of other colleges—which are usually cloistered from street view—has been limited to events I happened to attend, but I’m hoping to gradually explore all or most of them.
Departments
To complement the college system, there are also departments (some also known as faculties), which, as far as I know, function more as you would expect in a normal university. This is where research and lectures happen, where there are professors leading research groups, a head of department making decisions, etc. So in the Venn diagram, lecturers, professors, and graduate students are in a department bubble as well as their college bubble. (I believe undergraduates attend lectures in the relevant departments but aren’t directly associated with them until their last and most specialized year.) In the town mosaic, the departments are housed at a network of sites interspersed among the colleges. For example, my department, the Plant Sciences Department, along with several other natural sciences, is at the Downing Site near the city center. Arts, history, and law are at the Sidgwick Site, a mile down the road (next to Newnham, incidentally). Biomedical researchers work in and around Addenbrooke’s Hospital, a 30 minute cycle south of city center. As with everything in Cambridge, departments are decentralized.
Museums
The University includes eight museums (some associated with departments) and a Botanic Garden. The most famous museum is the Fitzwilliam, which features art and artifacts.
Non-university spaces
Plenty of people in Cambridge aren’t associated with the University, and there is plenty of land that isn’t owned by or at least isn’t functionally part of that University conglomeration. Some of those mosaic tiles:
- Green spaces like Parker’s Piece and Midsummer Common, where people play and congregate and where cows are allowed to graze in season. There are also less regimented fens and fields spread through the outskirts.
- The River Cam winds through the heart of Cambridge. It’s not a big river, and inside the city, has been encased in concrete for centuries; it’s well-used by rowers and the iconic punts—flat-bottomed boats pushed along with a long pole, like a gondola, and used to convey tourists and leisure-seekers along the riverside colleges and gardens and under picturesque bridges.
- Commercial spaces: right at the heart of Cambridge is a rather large mall (and another one within a mile), and many other streets are crammed with shops and cafes and pubs (so many pubs). There’s also a market square with a year-round collection of pavilioned kiosks.
- Anglia Ruskin University: an alternative to Cambridge Uni within the town, much more modern, and thriving in its own right (without the elitism).
- Churches and churchyards: while many colleges have impressive chapels, there are other old, noble churches as well. Their burial grounds are some of my favorite spots.
- Suburbs and villages: I’m not totally clear on the divisions, but Cambridge is both broken up into outskirt residential districts (for example Newnham College is also in a neighborhood known as Newnham) and outlying villages, many of them very charming. Cambridge’s cost of living is apparently through the roof, so a lot of people commute from these nearby villages.
- Tech: With a fairly recent boom in tech, Cambridge is known by some as the Silicon Fen. I know less about this infrastructure but I know it exists—Amazon, Microsoft, lots of biotech presence.
- Military: there are several American military bases nearby, as well as a Cambridge American Cemetery for American WWI and WWII dead.
Read more of The Cambridge Placebook to get glimpses into these places!