This book explores the changing patterns of higher education in England in the twentieth century, the types of institutions and the emergence of a 'system' of education. At the same time it traces the relationship between the writer-advocates of higher education and the changing world of higher education and its contexts. There is therefore an interrelated story of higher education, the writers, their messages, their backgrounds and ideologies, the audiences they intend to address, and the impacts of the state and other external forces. It is likely to appeal to higher education academics and administrators, politicians and other policy makers, staff and students on higher degree and professional programmes. It should be read by anyone who cares about English Universities and their future.

It discusses why the 'opinion makers' had disappeared or become silent by the beginning of the twenty-first century." "This is the first time the whole development of higher education and the views of many of its proponents has been subject to this kind of scrutiny."--BOOK JACKET.

This book tracks the dramatic outcomes of the federal government's growing involvement in higher education between World War I and the 1970s, and the conservative backlash against that involvement from the 1980s onward. Using cutting-edge analysis, Christopher Loss recovers higher education's central importance to the larger social and political history of the United States in the twentieth century, and chronicles its transformation into a key mediating institution between citizens and the state. Framed around the three major federal higher education policies of the twentieth century--the 1944 GI Bill, the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and the 1965 Higher Education Act--the book charts the federal government's various efforts to deploy education to ready citizens for the national, bureaucratized, and increasingly global world in which they lived. Loss details the myriad ways in which academic leaders and students shaped, and were shaped by, the state's shifting political agenda as it moved from a preoccupation with economic security during the Great Depression, to national security during World War II and the Cold War, to securing the rights of African Americans, women, and other previously marginalized groups during the 1960s and '70s. Along the way, Loss reappraises the origins of higher education's current-day diversity regime, the growth of identity group politics, and the privatization of citizenship at the close of the twentieth century. At a time when people's faith in government and higher education is being sorely tested, this book sheds new light on the close relations between American higher education and politics.

Abstract:

In the 1990s education has become one of the major social and political questions of the day. This book has been written to provide an authoritative guide to the issues which underlie the formulation of educational policy. It stands both as a substantial historical study in its own right and as an essential background and introduction to the current educational debate.

This work provides an overall review and analysis of the history of education and of its key research priorities in the British context. It investigates the extent to which education has contributed historically to social change in Britain, how it has itself been moulded by society, and the needs and opportunities that remain for further research in this general area. Contributors review the strengths and limitations of the historical literature on social change in British education over the past forty years, ascertain what this literature tells us about the relationship between education and social change, and map areas and themes for future historical research. They consider both formal and informal education, different levels and stages of the education system, the process and experience of education, and regional and national perspectives. They also engage with broader discussions about theory and methodology. The collection covers a large amount of historical territory, from the sixteenth century to the present, including the emergence of the learned professions, the relationship between society and the economy, the role of higher technological education, the historical experiences of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the social significance of teaching and learning, and the importance of social class, gender, ethnicity, and disability. It involves personal biography no less than broad national and international movements in its considerations. This book will be a major contribution to research as well as a general resource in the history and historiography of education in Britain.