Higher Education in Britain: The Cow Ruminant

Abstract

Britain, like a mole in the earth, went through a long process of adapting and adjusting, and finally produced a reasonably humane but quite unradical set of accommodations. It was a sort of slow surge over the years, for anyone in the thick of it, like-the animal images seem unavoidable-being on the back of a cow as it slowly turned over. [Richard Hoggart, in the 1971 Reith Lectures, describing the difference between British and French approaches to the pressure of rising student numbers in higher education. (The Listener, December 2, 1971.)]