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The university is a social institution which, like any other institution, has aims or functions for its members, for other social groups and for society as a whole; it has also a structure of roles, denned, sanctioned and provided with facilities for their performance. The normative conception of the institution—in this case the ‘idea of a university’—may or may not faithfully reproduce an objective description of statistical norms of behaviour. Under conditions of institutional change the two norms do not coincide. In this essay I will consider the British university from these two points of view (i. e. the ‘idea’ of a university and the ‘facts’) in an attempt to understand the discrepancy (i. e. the processes of change which lie behind the differences between wish and reality).
(1) SirAshby, Eric, Patterns of Universities in Non-European Societies (London, S.O.A.S.A., 1961), p. 3.Google Scholar
(2) Here is a typical example from Kenneth Mellanby, referring to his experience of university colleges in the British colonies and ex-colonies. “When I was in the thick of the struggle, I was always impatient at the slowness with which we proceeded, but now development in all colleges can be seen to have been almost incredibly rapid when compared to what has happened in Britain. Between 1945 and 1960 only one university institute, the University College of North Staffordshire, with [in 1960] some 700 undergraduates, actually started work in England, and other new universities seem to be evolving very slowly.” Universities Quarterly, 03 1962, p. 204.Google Scholar
(3) Halsey, A. H., Floud, Jean and Anderson, C. A., Education, Economy and Society (New York, Free Press, 1961), ch. XXXIIGoogle Scholar: ‘The Changing Functions of Universities’. See also the introductory chapter to this book by Jean Floud and A. H. Halsey. See also Floud, Jean and Halsey, A. H., The Sociology of Education. A Trend Report and Bibliography. Current Sociology, VII (1958).Google Scholar
(4) Newman, Cardinal, The Idea of a University (1852), Preface.Google Scholar
(5) “A society like ours to-day needs a far larger élite—in science, commerce, administration and in the professions—than it did at any earlier time.” SirBoyle, Edward, in Universities Quarterly, 03 1962, p. 129.Google Scholar
(6) For an elaboration of this, and the sequence of processes involved, in application to the changing functions of working class institutions in industrial England see Smelser, N., Social Change in The Industrial Revolution (London 1959).Google Scholar
(7) Cf. De Witt, N., Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R., (Washington, N.S.F., 1961), pp. 216–220.Google Scholar
(8) The Committee on Higher Education in Britain which is at present sitting under the chairmanship of Lord Robbins has this “larger complex” as the object of its terms of reference. The recommendations of the committee must recognise and may further encourage the process of functional specialisation among institutions of higher learning.
(9) For a recent account see Carr-Saunders, A. M., New Universities Overseas (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1961).Google Scholar
(10) Cf. Shils, Edward, The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Supplement I, 1961, pp. 81–87Google Scholar. “India was, and remains, an intellectual province of London, Oxford and Cambridge.”
(11) Report of the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge 1922, Cmd. 1588, para. 33.
(12) David Riesman, in Halsey, et al. , Education, Economy and Society, p. 481.Google Scholar
(13) Newman, , op. cit., p. 7.Google Scholar
(14) Gerth, H. and Mills, C. Wright, Essays from Max Weber (London 1948), p. 426.Google Scholar
(15) Ibid., p. 241.
(16) Dibelius, W., England, transl. Hamilton, M. A. (London, 1929), p. 409.Google Scholar
(17) Cecil, Lord David, Melbourne (New York, Grosset and Dunlop, 1954), p. 46Google Scholar. It may be added that at this period, the ‘grand tour’ being impracticable because of the Napoleonic Wars, some Whig families sent their cleverer sons for further education to the Scottish universities. Melbourne went to Glasgow and soon became aware of the danger to his position in aristocratic society of too serious or ‘pedantic’ an interest in intellectual matters.
(18) The most recent foundation, the University of Sussex, at Brighton, is aspiringly described as ‘Balliol by the Sea’.
(19) In England there are Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Durham (divided into two divisions, the Durham Colleges and King's College, Newcastle), Exeter, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London (a federal University with 33 self-governing schools and 10 Institutes directly controlled by the University), Manchester, Nottingham, Oxford, Reading, Sheffield and Southampton. In Scotland there are Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews (with colleges in St. Andrews and Dundee). The University of Wales consists of four constituent colleges at Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea and the Welsh National School of Medicine.
(20) These are the University College of North Staffordshire, the University College of Sussex, the Manchester College of Science and Technology and the Royal College of Science and Technology, Glasgow.
(21) The criteria used by the U.G.C. for selecting among applications for new universities are set out in their Report for 1959–1960 (Cmd. 1489), pp. 7–9. The Committee holds that increased student mobility has lessened the argument for location in densely populated catchment areas. Apart from this the Committee mentions (a) local enthousiasm, (b) the presence of industries in the area, (c) local financial support, (d) a site of no less that 200 acres within 2 or 3 miles from the centre of a city or town, (e) a suitable supply of lodgings and (f) attractive facilities for staff and their families.
(22) Its terms of reference are “To enquire into the financial needs of university education in Great Britain; to advise the Government as to the application of any grants made by Parliament towards meeting them; to collect, examine and make available information relating to university education throughout the United Kingdom; and to assist, in consultation with the universities and other bodies concerned, the preparation and execution of such plans for the development of the universities as may from time to time be required in order to ensure that they are fully adequate to national needs.”
(23) The recent decision of the British Government (March 1962) not to grant the finance recommended by the U.G.C. for expansion in 1962–67 and the raising of academic salaries is most Unusual and is attracting lively hostility in public discussion.
(24) For a detailed account and assessment of the role of the U.G.C. see Vaizey, John, ‘The Finance of Higher Education in the United Kingdom’, Yearbook of Education 1959 (London, Evans, 1960), ch. IV.Google Scholar
(25) The “correlation of status with self-government was a constant theme of the U.G.C. and ran directly counter to the local government traditions of the founders of the civic universities”. Vaizey, John, loc. cit. p. 302.Google Scholar
(26) Cf. Halsey, A. H. ‘University Expansion and the Collegiate Ideal’, Universities Quarterly, 12 1961, pp. 55–58.Google Scholar
(27) Cmd. 1489, p. 15.
(28) Cf. my ‘British Universities & Intellectual Life’, Universities Quarterly, 02 1958, pp. 141–152Google Scholar
(29) About 10% of full time students at British Universities are from overseas: also a rapidly increasing proportion of the part-time students both inside and on the fringes of the university system.
(30) Cf. my “A Pyramid of Prestige”, Universities Quarterly, 09 1961, pp. 341–345.Google Scholar
(31) One demonstration of this is terminological. Oxford and Cambridge have dons and undergraduates: the modern universities have staff and students.
(32) In Newcomb, T. M. and Wilson, E. K. eds., The Study of College Peer Groups, forthcoming.Google Scholar
(33) The reform of the colleges after 1850 was important in supporting the academic orientations of undergraduates by strengthening the scholarly interests of dons.
(34) Nevertheless the social and educational origins of students in the ancient and modern universities remain markedly different. The proportions coming from manual working families in 1956 were for the university system as a whole 25%, for Cambridge 9%, Oxford 13%, London 21%, Scotland 24%, English provincial universities 31% and Wales 40%. Similarly while only 27% of the Cambridge entrants had come from grammar schools maintained by local education authorities the percentage at Oxford was 39, at London 58, in Scotland 66, in the English provincial universities 71 and in Wales 90; cf. Kelsall, R. K., Applications for Admission to Universities (London, Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth, 1957) chapters III and IV).Google Scholar
(35) The resistance to professionalisation of business and administration, i. e. to any occupational skills not clearly derived from the natural sciences, has been enormously strong in the British universities compared with those in North America.
