Australian Higher Education Research and Society

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is the second part of a review of research on higher education since World War II. Fart I, published in the previous issue of this Journal, examined how research responded to post‐war reconstruction of the later 1940s and the rising community expectations for education of the 1950s and 1960s. In Part II the themes are equality of opportunity and the end of expansion. By the mid‐1960s many researchers were questioning the representativeness of participation in higher education and the nature of the education process. More recently some of the research questions have been reminiscent of the late 1940s, that is, how can the efficiency of higher education be improved. Whereas expansion and optimism characterised the first thirty post‐war years however, the context is now one of reduced resources and some pessimism.