The last days of the University Grants Committee

Abstract

The publication of the White Paper Higher Education : Meeting the Challenge in April 1987 spells the demise of the University Grants Committee in the form the universities have been used to, at least since 1946. 1 The White Paper follows closely on the publication of the Croham committee's report Review of the University Grants Committee in February 1987, but departs from the report's recommendations in significant ways.2 The Croham report, though it made some major recommendations on both constitutional and operational matters, nevertheless represented a tidyingup exercise, a refurbishment of the machinery to make it more effective in its present job. Lord Swann, opening a debate in the House of Lords on the report on 18 March, 1987, summarised the position accurately when he said that the University Grants Committee as it operated in what he called the "golden age for universities" between the Second World War and 1973 was "a benign and friendly institution that co-ordinated our efforts in a quiet way and stood as a buffer between the government of the day and rightfully autonomous institutions of learning". Such a body "was not designed to oversee a huge part of the public sector at a time of severe retrenchment and under governments more interested in business efficiency than originality".3 The report was welcomed by nearly all the speakers in the debate and it was generally believed that the government would accept it and act on it as it stood. The White Paper, however, suggests that the government has in mind some crucial changes which would transform the character of the University Grants Committee.