Oxford University Officers' Training Corps

The Officers' Training Corps (OTC), more fully called the University Officers' Training Corps (UOTC), are military leadership training units similar to a university club but operated by the British Army. Their focus is to develop the leadership abilities of their members whilst giving them an opportunity to take part in military life whilst at university. UOTC units are not deployable units and their members are not considered 'trained soldiers' and thus cannot be mobilised for active service. The majority of members of the UOTC do not go on to serve in the regular or reserve forces.

The emergence of the Officers' Training Corps as a distinct unit began in 1906, when the Secretary of State for War, Lord Haldane, first appointed a committee to consider the problem of the shortage of officers in the Militia, the Volunteer Force, the Yeomanry, and the Reserve of Officers. The committee recommended that an Officers' Training Corps be formed. The Corps was to be in two divisions: a junior division in public schools and a senior division in the universities. In October 1908, therefore, authorised by Army Order 160 of July 1908, as part the Haldane Reforms of the Reserve forces, the contingents were formally established as the Officers' Training Corps and incorporated into the new Territorial Force, which was created by the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907.

During the First World War, the OTCs became officer producing units and some 20,577 officers and 12,290 other ranks were recruited from the OTCs between August 1914 and March 1915. The Munich Crisis saw a huge increase in recruitment to military units generally and OTCs in particular as large numbers of people volunteered for military service in the prelude to the Second World War. At the start of the Second World War the UOTCs became Senior Training Units (STCs) and their membership automatically joined the Home Guard and in 1948 they became University Training Units (UTCs).

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