Slouching towards a mass system: society, government and institutions in the United Kingdom

Abstract

The paper describes and analyses postwar changes in regulatory and classificatory relationships between British governments and higher education institutions, in the context of broad social, economic and political change, in three time periods. The first, from 1945 to 1970, was marked by consolidation, increased government support, growth in numbers of institutions and students and a broad consensus around the desirability of expansion. The second, from 1970 to 1987, was marked by political hostility and, until 1983, stagnation in the rates of demand for places by students and for graduates by employers. The third period, from 1987 to the present day, suggests that Britain is now committing itself, whether deliberately or not, to a system of mass higher education, with a series of radical changes in government-higher education relationships. In conclusion the paper discusses alternative theoretical approaches to interpreting these developments: Trow's typology of elite-massuniversal higher education and its implications for transition between types; Teichler's analysis of models of higher education structure; and a possible synthesis between the two. But all such models need to pay due attention to the internal processes of higher education at the level of departmental and even individual behavior.

Questioning the value of the research selectivity process in British university accounting

“…Traditionally, however, the former polytechnics' student intake was characterized by a higher proportion of working-class, and mature, students, many with relatively poor entry qualifications compared with the traditional university sector. Additionally, many, though admittedly not all, polytechnics made efforts in the 1980s to recruit various kinds of under-represented groups into their student population -for example, inner-city residents, members of ethnic minorities and women in traditionally male disciplines (Fulton, 1991). As Mar Molinero (1989) points out, redistributing resources supposedly to protect excellence may ultimately result in discrimination against these latter groups who are most in need of support.…”

Ontario Higher Education Reform, 1995-2003: From Modest Modifications to Policy Reform

“…There are at least three important reasons why Ontario higher education did not follow these broader international patterns. First, a major objective of policy reforms in many jurisdictions, especially in the 1980s, was to facilitate the transition from elite to mass higher education (Fulton, 1991;Meek, 2002). Participation rates in Canadian postsecondary education increased without dramatic system-level reforms, largely because of previous structural changes in the 1960s.…”

Two decades of higher education

“…In 1993 that body will merge with the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council to produce an overall Higher Education Funding Council. The impact of the Thatcher government's retrenchment on the universities is described and analyzed in Sizer (1987) and the implications of the new system of funding research selectively are commented upon by Fulton (1991). These changes have come about as a result of a determination by government-the paymaster-to bend higher education to its own purposes.…”