Higher Education Policy In The United Kingdom - Reformation or Dissolution?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyse those imminent and potent changes within higher education in the United Kingdom which are to follow the introduction of the government's Education Reform Bill of 1987 (NOTE 1). This legislation, referred to popularly (and not without wry amusement) as GERBIL, is designed to bring major changes in funding policy, governance, and conditions of appointment for faculty in the universities, polytechnical institutes and selected colleges in Britain. While there are fundamental differences between the structure and organization of tertiary education in Britain and Canada, it is useful to ponder several imperatives which reflect government policy in the United Kingdom and which are strikingly similar to many of the policy thrusts instituted by the Mulroney government in the past four years. It is for this reason that the Education Reform Bill, viewed from a Canadian perspective, provides intriguing vision of the future of higher education which seems to be much more relevant to the Canadian context than might first appear. British higher education enjoys both the advantages and disadvantages of having to relate primarily to one level of government in Westminster (NOTE 2). Nevertheless, there are important differences in the management and structure of the system in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, quite apart from critical variations in roles and functions between universities and polytechnics. As in Canada, the relationship in Britain between institutions of higher education and elected governments, local or national, is important factor in how these institutions exercise fiscal and curricular autonomy, conduct research, and establish educational priorities. In this regard, Oxford's Professor Donald Dworkin notes that, although the recent initiatives taken by the Thatcher government in the United Kingdom might appear on the surface to be about economics and efficiency, they really represent an ideological battle between two strikingly different versions of the role of universities in a democracy (Dworkin, 1988).