The third problem in higher education standing out in the 1960s was its divided (“binary”) structure and administration: the relatively privileged universities on the one hand and the less favored “public sector” institutions, with polytechnics in the lead, on the other.
The universities defended their so-called “autonomy”, that is, independence from outside control. In practice this concept had lost its real basis: universities were already financed mainly from state funds, these being distributed by a mediating body, the University Grants Committee (UGC), including representatives of both government and universities. This allowed for increasing control from outside. Nevertheless, the universities, asserting their function as ideological strongholds of the ruling class, did retain on student intake. The Labor government, with its reformist policies, was not prepared to challenge their position.
The status of polytechnics was different. As institutions of the “public sector”, they not only depended on state finance, but were also subject to direct government planing. Their enforced expansion, with restricted resources, was intended to save money./ in reality, the separate development of polytechnics and universities meant duplication and waste and deepened the social division between the two sectors.
The maintenance of this “binary” policy led to growing conflict by the end of the 1960s between the Labor government and progressives. Left forces in the Labor Party itself demanded a system of unified financing and administration (under a central education commission, responsible to the Department of Education and Science), while programs of the Communist Party and progressive teachers’ unions went further, for example with proposals for the representation of teachers, students and democratic organisations on the regional bodies of a unified higher education system. Within the limits imposed by the capitalist order, these were worth-while and realistic demands.
The 1970s-Change to restriction
As economic difficulties increased, pressure from the monopolies caused one question to dominate more and more: how to reduce the cost of educational expansion. A first response followed with the Tories’ White Paper on Education in 1972, which slowed down the growth rate of higher education, limiting both resources and student numbers
By the mid-1970s, the capitalist critics completely overshadowed economic life in Britain. The new Labor government (1974 onwards), giving way to increasing pressure from the monopolies, forced through devastating cuts in social expenditure, including education. They announced even lower projection of students numbers for the 1980s than the 1972 White Paper had done. The number of full-time places in higher education, having risen only slowly during the early 1970s, was to reach no more than 550,000 by 1981/82. This meant a percentage of 18-year-olds entering full-time studies that would be no higher than a decade earlier. The revised estimates went with immediate cuts in building, equipment, staff and courses.
All these restrictions were wrapped up in arguments about an alleged falling demand for education, unemployment of graduates and a dropping birthrate. But the real problem lay in the effects of the economic crisis:
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Opportunities to study lessened, especially for the working class, as a result both of the cuts in education and the worsening financial position of wide sections of the working population.
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The “labor market” for students tightened: not because there were already too many qualified specialists, but because overall economic activity had been drastically reduced.
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Young teachers in particular faced large-scale unemployment. The government’s claim that the birthrate (and hence numbers of future pupils) had dropped was based on uncertain estimates. The essential reason for training fewer teachers was that school expenditure had been cut back.
Short-sighted economising also affected course development in the mid-1970s.
The Labor government speeded up the reshaping of teacher training already envisaged in the White Paper of 1972. Some colleges were to be integrated in polytechnics, some merged with other colleges in further education to become new institutes (or colleges) of higher education, a few were to remain in existence on their own , and a number of colleges were shut down altogether. Although the closer link between teacher training and further education, especially polytechnics, had advantages regarding the character of courses, this was far outweighed by the fact that the overriding aim of the changes was simply to save money.
The restructuring of teachers’ courses was itself contradictory. A new form of the Bachelor of Education (Bed) degree was established, replacing an earlier scheme of the late 1960s. Supervised by the CNAA, it was to combine academic studies and practical training. It had positive features, but was initially not introduced for all teachers, and the older sub-degree certificate course continued to be taught.
A further controversial innovation was a two-year course for the so-called Diploma in Higher Education (DipHE), designed both as the first part of the new BEd, and as a course in its own right provided at any institution within higher education. There was little doubt that the DipHE was intended primarily to provide a cheap way of meeting the continuing demand for higher education. Questions of content were left open,