Pattison made his imprint on public controversy chiefly in the debates on university reform; and that meant, above all, the reform of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford was his home from the age of eighteen to his death, but this was no merely parochial concern. His thinking about the reform of Oxford was informed by a profound knowledge of the history and present state of European universities. Moreover, although he loathed the Victorian passion for being busy, he willingly lent his support to newer universities, and university colleges, in England and Wales: he examined for University College London, served on the Council of University College Aberystwyth, and chaired the Committee of Management and subsequently the Council of Bedford College. He was a good friend to Owens College, Manchester, and became a member of the Court of the Victoria University at its inauguration in 1880. As we have noticed, he was also an active supporter of the higher education of women.

There is a further point: the reform of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge was a hugely important issue in Victorian politics and public life. This was partly because at the beginning of the nineteenth century they were Anglican monopolies, and the principal route to ordination in the established church. Steps to remove confessional restrictions, or to secularize the universities, inevitably awoke the passions of denomination and churchmanship that were the motors of so much of Victorian politics.