How have the issues facing universities changed since 1945? What has the expansion of higher education meant for universities in the UK? What has changed and what has remained familiar over the period? Essential reading for all higher education policy makers, managers, administrators and academics, this book provides an authoritative account of the development of higher education in the UK since 1945. The changes in the system have been far-reaching and numerous, affecting a wide range of people beyond those who work or study in universities or colleges, including parents, employers and policy makers. This book takes both chronological and thematic approaches. The opening chapters of the book provide: An overview of the history of higher education in the UK up until 1945 A detailed tabular summary of post-war higher education developments A list of current UK universities and their origins Key statistics on students The book also considers key themes in the story of UK higher education in the post-war period, including: Policy and funding Institutional diversity Institutional management and relationships Course design Research and knowledge The student experience The staff experience Only a thorough understanding of the background to the present day realities of higher education will enable lessons to be learned for the future of higher education in the UK.

This book examines how policy has been made in British higher education and how the results of these policies have determined the shape of higher education.

Britain since 1945: The People's Peace is the first comprehensive study by a professional historian of British history from 1945 to the present day. It examines the transformation of post-war Britain from the planning enthusiasm of 1945 to the rise of New Labour. Its themes include the troubles of the British economy; public criticism of the legitimacy of the state and its instruments of authority; the co-existence of growing personal prosperity with widespread social inequality; and the debates aroused by decolonization, and Britain's relationship to the Commonwealth, the US and Europe. Changes in cultural life, from the puritanical 'austerity' of the 1940's, through the 'permissiveness' of the 1960s, to the tensions and achievements of recent years are also charted. Using a wide variety of sources, including the records of political parties and the most recently released documents from the Public Records Office, Kenneth Morgan brings the story right up to date and draws comparisons with the post-war history of other nations. This penetrating analysis by a leading twentieth-century historian will prove invaluable to anyone interested in the development of the Britain of today.

Higher education news today can more or less be boiled down to one sentence: the university is in crisis. Skyrocketing student debt, decreased public financing, the weakening of tenure, the rise of adjunct labor, battles over the value of the humanities, calls for skills focused instruction--all the problems besetting contemporary higher education in the United States are interrelated, and they can all be traced to one fact: campuses and classrooms are now battlegrounds in the struggle between knowledge for its own sake and commodified learning. Henry Heller offers here a magisterial account of the modern university that shows exactly how we've reached this point. Taking readers from the early Cold War--when support for universities was support for capitalism--through the countless social, political, and educational changes of the ensuing decades, Heller reveals how American educational institutions have been forced to decide between teaching students to question the dominant order and helping to perpetuate it. And they've had to do so knowing that all the pressure politics and finance was pushing for the latter. Heller covers such key moments as McCarthyism and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, as well as contemporary struggles including the attempts at unionization of post-doctorals, the National Adjuncts Walkout Day in 2015, the protests in Missouri related to race, workplace benefits, and leadership, and the firing of Steven Salaita for his pro-Palestinian tweets, which sparked a huge controversy around free speech and academic freedom. The Capitalist University is a thoroughly grounded radical history of an institution whose influence and importance--and failures--reach deep into American political and social life.

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.