when hoppus was a young man, england had only two universities, oxford and cambridge, and they were restricted to anglicans. this led to the emergence of many privately funded independent dissenting academies, many of which functioned as colleges, preparing young men for university studies abroad, in scotland or on the continent. in the early nineteenth century, a group of english reformers with liberal educational ideas promoted the idea of a place of further education that might open its doors to men of all religious affiliations or beliefs. this proposal succeeded between 1825–8 with the founding of london university, now university college london, the first entirely nondenominational college of higher education in england.