Detailed Instructions: Answer the question from the given passage. Your answer should be directly extracted from the passage, and it should be a single entity, name, or number, not a sentence.
Q: Passage: The city has two universities — Newcastle University and Northumbria University. Newcastle University has its origins in the School of Medicine and Surgery, established in 1834 and became independent from Durham University on 1 August 1963 to form the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Newcastle University is now one of the UK's leading international universities. It won the coveted Sunday Times University of the Year award in 2000. Northumbria University has its origins in the Newcastle Polytechnic, established in 1969 and became the University of Northumbria at Newcastle in 1992 as part of the UK-wide process in which polytechnics became new universities. Northumbria University was voted 'Best New University' by The Times Good University Guide 2005 and also won a much coveted company award of the 'Most IT enabled organisation' (in the UK), by the IT industry magazine Computing. Question: What happened in 1992 in a UK-wide process?
A:
polytechnics became new universities