IT IS NO EXAGGERATION to state that political economy was the most popular subject with the British public in the first half of the nineteenth century. Ricardo lectures of 1824, delivered byJ. R. McCulloch, were attended by the elite of London society, and the popularization of Ricardian political economy by Harriett Martineau in the 1830s outsold many of the popular novels of the day. (1) Nonetheless, despite this deep public curiosity, political economy did not form part of the required knowledge at either of the two English universities, Oxford and Cambridge. Although the 1820s saw the institution of professorships at both universities, the subject was not especially popular at either place. Indeed, when George Pryme, the professor of political economy at Cambridge, wrote to William Whewell, the powerful Master of Trinity College, of his intention to resign, he worried about the future of political economy at Cambridge. The Absence of any endowment for a Professorship, he wrote, has made me hesitate as to offering this Resignation; but as I have confidence of the desire of the University not to let so important a study be neglected (and this would be the only University in the Kingdom where it would be so) I have no right to suppose that the Council and the Senate would not give effect to this feeling by making an adequate provision for the continuance of the Professorial duties. (2) It is strange to think today that the predecessor of Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes would have stayed on at his post many years after he felt he had ceased to be useful for fear that the University would abolish his post if he resigned. Political Economy would seem to be a proper subject to test the explanatory power of various theories of the history of education. (3) functional approach, for example, argues that changes in the educational system are fashioned so as to meet the changing of society. new needs of an Industrial society are thus an important, perhaps primary, force explaining changes in British higher education in the early nineteenth century. By contrast, the Marxist explanation focuses on changes in the direction of class conflict as the most important variable