no attempt was made to ensure that DipHE students could transfer to full degree courses other than the BEd , and the value of the DipHE as a qualification remained very uncertain.
Apart from the hampering effect on educational provision, the impact of the capitalist crisis on education was also clearly evident in the ideological field. Reactionary ideas (that of inborn intelligence, for instance) reasserted themselves, and Marxists came under attack.
The progressive forces themselves were affected. Their campaigns at some points became defensive, concentrating too much on purely material questions- a tendency which Marxists have always had to combat. On the other hand, the ties between teacher and student unions and the labor movement were consolidated.
Pointing the way forward, Communist and others on the left stressed the need to associate immediate with long-term issue, always trying to stimulate fresh initiatives on the vital questions that had already been raised in the late 1960s-on course content, the aims and organisation of higher education, and its role in the struggle to achieve fundamental change in Britain.