Programska knjižica - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

Masefield, about the pursuit of truth and “the dignity of thought and learning”.
These topics disappear after Chapter One, and the bulk of the report shows that
the committee, if it ever kept these ideals in mind, was unable to find any link
between them and the pragmatics of making policy. Thus, while the committee
has lots to say about topics that government policy had already brought to the
fore, notably quality control, access (who is to attend university) and finance,
in my eyes it massively misses the point.
1) Make-believe as government policy
In 1992 John Major’s government passed a Further and Higher Education
Act which brought dramatic change to higher education., Since 1965, British
higher education had been organized on what was called the “binary system”,
binary because divided between universities and other institutions, mainly
polytechnics and teachers’ training colleges. The degrees awarded by the latter
institutions were validated by the Council for National Academic Awards;
they had a strong bias towards vocational and applied subjects, and their teaching
staff were not expected to publish research, though they were certainly
not prohibited from doing so. The universities received block grants from the
government through a small body of academics called the University Grants
Committee (UGC); the UGC had considerable autonomy and the universities
had a great measure of discretion how to spend their grants, which until the late
1970s were given for five years at a time. Polytechnics, like state schools, were
under local governments, which also gave them a more local character.
In 1992 the binary system was abolished and the former polytechnics etc
mostly became universities, with corresponding changes in other areas of nomenclature,
so that their executive heads became Vice-chancellors or Principals
and most senior teachers became professors. (In Britain the title of Professor
is reserved for those who in America are called “full professor”, and a
The most recent official source on our topic is the debate on higher education held in the
House of Lords in the week before Christmas. In my eyes it is not so woefully inadequate as the
Dearing Report, but still fails to focus on the fundamental questions. For some details, see Appendix
1 below.
I served as a member of its Theology and Religious Studies Board 1983-90.
In 1988 under Mrs Thatcher, this was superseded by the University Funding Council
(UFC), which was directly under government control.
The only private university in Britain, Buckingham, was founded in the late 1970s and is of
no importance; nor has it escaped the bureaucratic control described below. At Oxford and Cambridge
the colleges are private educational foundations, legally autonomous and with their own resources,
but indirectly, through student fees etc., they are financially quite dependent on the state.
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