Higher Education in the United Kingdom into the 1990s: Shopping Mall or Reconciliation with Europe?

Abstract

Government set the agenda for change in British higher education in the 1980s. Yet this policy has been a puzzle. For the first half of the decade, government policy could be described either as salutary blood-letting or as indiscriminate massacre of institutions which were seen as fat and self-satisfied defenders of traditional values. But the invective and expenditure cuts obscured the politicians' failure to enunciate a view of higher education consistent with the broader political doctrines they so forcefully proclaimed. Higher education was run, though indirectly and shamefacedly, by the criteria of central planning by governments which were committed to 'rolling back' the state. It was not until 1989 that students were identified as consumers and a formula was devised to bring them into a 'market' relationship with institutions of higher education. Governments in other European countries also sought efficiency in higher education in the 1980s and provided opportunities for initiative by individual institutions. Yet the 'market' approach, which the British Conservative government has finally adopted, seems to diverge sharply from the collectivist traditions which remain powerful in other Western European countries. The outcome of a divergent political philosophy, paradoxically, may bring a traditionally elitist higher education in Britain into the European mainstream by increasing student opportunities and choice. This paper will address three questions. What principles underly the relationship between government, public institutions and citizens in Conservative ideology and how far have these been applied to higher education, especially at the end of the 1980s? How far does this strategy confront the peculiar traditions and weaknesses of British higher education? How do they compare with approaches taken in other Western European countries, particularly in view of Europe-wide links in higher education?