Patel, Josh (2021) Imagining the role of the student in society : ideas of British higher education policy and pedagogy 1957-1972. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Today, the 1960s are fondly remembered as a time when higher education in Britain was understood as a public good. University was free for students, paid for by the state. This expenditure was to provide equality of opportunity, especially for those of lower classes and women. Since the 1990s by contrast, higher education has been based on a marketised funding regime. Self-interested students choose to purchase useful ‘skills’ from higher education providers in order to earn higher wages in the future. Much of the existing historical literature sharply distinguishes this ‘neoliberal’ era from the ‘social democratic’ era of the 1960s.

The historiography of post-war Britain increasingly challenges such ‘rise-and-fall’ narratives of social democracy and instead emphasises its dynamism and flexibility. This thesis shows there is much greater diversity than hitherto appreciated in ideas of social democratic policy and pedagogy. Universities in particular were less conservative or complacent in their ambitions than they have been perceived. This includes a complicated relationship with the place of personal flourishing in liberal thought. Education for citizenship and education for consumerism are not so easily disentangled.

This thesis explores the university ‘student’ as imagined by a vanguard of reformist university leaders. It begins with neoliberal economist Lionel Robbins, chairman of the famous Committee on Higher Education (1961-63). It examines how the choice of the individual citizen consumer student was made central to determining the pattern and size of higher education. This followed Robbins’ conviction that the freedom of choice was central to the ‘good society’ and human flourishing, but that it must be secured by state intervention. To educate this student, university pedagogies were redeployed to meet the new challenges of the Cold War and modern technological society. Through liaison with industry, reformists imagined a university education would provide students with a holistic understanding of society. They would learn how to best apply their specialist knowledge in the service of liberal capitalism. This philosophy found its way into the pedagogy and built environment of the new universities, including York, Warwick, and Stirling. Throughout the expanding British higher education system were a series of complicated alliances between the priorities of the consumer and the market and the values of the fair, free, ‘good society’.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HX Socialism. Communism. Anarchism J Political Science > JC Political theory L Education > LA History of education
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Education, Higher -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Education, Higher -- Economic aspects -- Great Britain, Education, Higher -- Social aspects -- Great Britain, Higher education and state, Socialism and education -- Great Britain -- History, Neoliberalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century
Official Date:	July 2021
Dates:	Date Event July 2021 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Riello, Giorgio ; Stein, Claudia
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	x, 400 leaves : illustrations, photographs
Language:	eng

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