The Rise of ‘The Market’ in Political Thinking about Universities

Abstract

This article explores the genealogy and character of the pro-market thinking about Higher Education that has come to the fore within the UK policy community. It charts the rise to prominence of one of the most important sources of such thinking in postwar politics—the “economic liberalism” propounded by a number of New Right intellectuals, commentators and politicians from the late 1950s, and excavates one of the key intellectual paradigms that sustained a more pro-market orientation in policy discourse. It also seeks to shed light on the limits and contingent character of this emerging discourse, emphasising the complex and tense relationship between economic-liberal ideas and different conservative arguments, and exploring the political factors which enabled the former to gain some traction in these years. It ends with some reflections on the implications of this account for the contemporary debate about Higher Education funding in the UK.

Acknowledgement

The bulk of the research informing this article was completed during my tenure as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research into the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, during 2010. I am indebted to CRASSH for providing such a collegial and stimulating atmosphere for this project. I have also benefitted greatly from the wisdom and advice of John Brennan and Stefan Collini. And I am very grateful to Evy Varsamopoulou for the invitation to contribute to this Special Issue.

Notes

Notes

1. See, for instance, Stefan Collini, “Browne's Gamble,” London Review of Books, 32.21, 4 November 2010; http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n21/stefan-collini/brownes-gamble

2. These include a number of measures added to protect those who move into less well-paid post-graduate employment and to include financial support for part-time students.

3. Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education: An Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance (12 October 2010); http://hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/report/.

4. See John Holmwood, A Manifesto for the Public University (London: Bloomsbury, 2011), James Vernon, “The End of the Public University in England,” http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/the-end-of-the-public-university-in-england/, and Alan Finlayson, “Britain, Greet the Age of Privatised Higher Education,” http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alan-finlayson/britain-greet-age-of-privatised-higher-education. Also see Brian Salter and Tony Tapper, The State and Higher Education (Ilford: Woburn Press, 1994) for an account which counterpoints the dominance of a broadly liberal consensus about Higher Education throughout the century with the radical change in direction associated with the Thatcher-led administrations.

5. See, for instance, Henri Giroux, “Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere,” Harvard Education Review 72.4 (2002): 425–64; and David Marquand, Decline of the Public: The Hollowing Out of Citizenship (Oxford: Polity, 2004).

6. For an excellent account of the different strands of political thinking that developed in relation to the market in relation to HE in the postwar period, see Charles Ellis, “Traditionalism, Scepticism and Populism: Conservatism and the Spirit of the Market in Post-Sixties Britain” (Ph.D diss., University of Sheffield, 2007).

7. For a helpful discussion of definitional issues relating to the term “neo-liberalism,” see William Davies, “The Making of Neo-Liberalism,” Renewal: A Journal of Labour Politics 17.4 (2009) http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-making-of-neo-liberalism/.

8. For accounts of the impact of these developments upon political debate, see Salter and Tapper, The State and Higher Education, and Robert Anderson, British Universities: Past and Present (London: Continuum, 2006).

9. Central government was, by 1960, responsible for providing approximately 90% of their funds to universities, a major change from the situation where the bulk of these institutions’ funds had, during the 1930s, been supplied by an ad hoc mixture of donations, endowments, fees, and local authority grants.

10. Roy Lewis and Angus Maude, The English Middle Classes (Melbourne: Penguin, 1949), 200.

11. Michael Shattock, UGC and the Management of British Universities (London: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press, 1994).

12. See, for instance, Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs (London: Fontana, 1977).

13. Kingsley Amis, “Lone Voices,” in What Became of Jane Austen? And Other Questions (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), 161.

14. R. Kojecky, T. S. Eliot's Social Criticism (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), 199, 200.

15. Kenneth Minogue, The Concept of a University (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970).

16. Some of the ideas set out in his collection of lectures, Idea of a University, have remained a touchstone reference in debates about the ethos of, and rationale for, universities in Britain: John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1994).

17. For a broadly similar argument, see J. Vaizey, Education for Tomorrow (London: Penguin 1967). On the subsequent influence of Barnett, see Noel Annan, Our Age (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990).

18. See, for instance, Paul Johnson, “The Rise and Fall of Academic Triumphalism,” Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 October 1977.

19. For accounts of the IEA, see Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution 1931–1983 (London: HarperCollins, 1994), and Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, British Think-Tanks and the Climate of Opinion (London: UCL Press, 1998).

20. These include his widely read A Tiger by its Tail: the Keynesian Legacy of Inflation (London: IEA, 1972).

21. Roger Backhouse, “Economists and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism,” Renewal: A Journal of Labour Politics 17.4 (2009); http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/economists-and-the-rise-of-neo-liberalism/.

22. See Backhouse, “Economists and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism,” and Ben Jackson, “The Art of the Impossible,” Renewal: A Journal of Labour Politics 17.4 (2009), http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-art-of-the-impossible/.

23. Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), 40.

24. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, 393.

25. These were eventually re-packaged as the Hobart Papers, 154 of which were published up to 2006, in addition to the paperbacks, occasional papers, readings and research monographs that IEA produced.

26. See Backhouse, “Economists and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism.”

27. See, for instance, Mark Blaug's approach to the economics of education policy, An Introduction to the Economics of Education (London: Allen Lane, 1970).

28. See H. S.Ferns, Towards an Independent University (London: IEA, 1969), and “A Radical Proposal for the Universities,” Political Quarterly (July-September, 1967): 276–82.

29. Arthur Seldon, “Preface,” in Alan T. Peacock and Jack Wiseman, Education for Democrats: A Study of the Financing of Education in a Free Society (London: IEA, 1964), 5.

30. Alan Prest, Financing University Education (London: IEA, 1966), 30.

31. Peacock and Wiseman, Education for Democrats.

32. Alan T. Peacock and Anthony J. Culyer, Economic Aspects of Student Unrest (London: IEA, 1969).

33. Michael Crew and Alistair Young, Paying by Degrees: A Study of the Financing of Higher Education Students by Grants, Loans and Vouchers (London: IEA, 1977).

34. Alan Lewis, Grants or Loans?: A Survey of Opinion on the Finance of Maintenance Costs of University Students (London: IEA, 1980).

35. Lewis drew upon separate surveys of the views of students and parents about their attitudes to loans and grants.

36. See in particular Brian Cox and Tony Dyson, eds., Crisis in Education (London: Critical Quarterly Society, 1969), and Fight for Education: A Black Paper (London: Critical Quarterly Society, 1969). A total of five papers were published between 1969 and 1977. Their title invoked a symbolic opposition to the drift of educational policy set out in several “White Papers” in the 1960s. They were published by Critical Quarterly, a widely read, non-specialist literary and critical journal, which Cox and Dyson set up in the late 1950s.

37. C. B. Cox was a teacher and author, with strong interests in the questions of educational opportunity and the nature of the literary canon. He went on to pursue an academic career, becoming Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Manchester and a respected contributor to debates about education. He expressed regret in later years for the way in which the liberal values of the Critical Quarterly were hijacked by voices from the New Right: see Michael Schmidt, “Brian Cox: Obituary,” The Guardian, 28 April 2008. A. E. Dyson was a Lecturer in English based at the University of Bangor, and founder of the Homosexual Law Reform Society.

38. Comprehensive schools were secondary-level state schools that did not select students on the basis of their ability. First introduced in 1965, they were typically larger than already existing schools, and taught children of mixed abilities in the same class.

39. Tony Dyson, “Farewell to the Left,” in Right Turn: Symposium, ed. Rhodes Boyson (London: Churchill Press, 1970).

40. D. C. Watt, “The Freedom of the Universities: Illusion and Reality, 1962–9,” in Cox and Dyson, Fight for Education.

41. See Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, Keith Joseph (London: Acumen, 2001).

42. Harry Johnson, “The Economics of Student Protest,” New Society, 7 November 1968, and, for an opposing view, see Richard Hoggart, “1968–1978: The Student Movement and its Effects in the Universities,” Political Quarterly 50.2 (1979): 172–81.

43. See also Edward Shils, “The Enemies of Academic Freedom,” Minerva 12 (1974): 405–15, and Ken Watkins, “Influencing the Political Future,” in The Practice of Politics and Other Essays (London: Nelson, 1975).

44. Edward Norman, “Establishing Thinking as a Threat to Capitalism,” Times Higher Education Supplement, 13 May 1977.

45. Seldon, “Preface,” 28–30. Following extensive debate, Buckingham was founded along the “traditionalist” lines favoured by such figures as Max Beloff and Michael Oakeshott.

46. On the Thatcher government's relationship with Higher Education, see Michael Shattock, “Thatcherism and British Higher Education,” Change 21 (1989): 31–39; and Salter and Tapper, The State and Higher Education.

47. See, for instance, Chris Shore and Susan Wright, “Audit Culture and Anthropology: Neo-Liberalism in British Higher Education,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5.4 (1999): 557–75.

48. See Shattock, “Thatcherism and British Higher Education.”

49. Elie Kedourie, Diamonds into Glass: The Government and the Universities (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1988), 28.

50. For a partisan discussion of the challenges involved in reducing levels of expenditure, see Max Beloff “British Universities and the Public Purse,” Minerva 5.4 (1990): 520–32, and “Universities and the Public Purse: An Update,” Higher Education Quarterly 44.1 (1990): 3–20.

51. These views are discussed in Lewis, Grants or Loans?. Also see S. Caine, British Universities: Purposes and Prospects (London: Bodley Head, 1969).

52. L. Robbins, “Introduction,” in The Taming of Government, ed. S. Litchfield et al. (IEA, 1979).

53. The LSE economist Nicholas Barr has emerged as an especially influential adviser to government in recent years. His argument that flat-level grants for students disadvantage those from low-income households has figured prominently in debates about university funding.

54. See Noel Thompson, “Supply Side Socialism: The Political Economy of New Labour,” New Left Review 216 (1996): 37–54.