High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The 1994 Group is a coalition of 19 top "smaller research-intensive universities" in the United Kingdom founded in 1994 to defend their interests following the creation of the Russell Group by larger research-intensive universities earlier that year. The 1994 Group represents nineteen of the UK’s leading research-intensive universities, including many of those founded in the 1960s; around half of the top twenty universities in UK national newspaper league tables are 1994 Group members.