This book examines the developments of the UK Higher Education system,
from a time of donnish dominion, progressive decline and the increasing
role of the market via the introduction of tuition fees. It offers a
protracted empirical analysis of the seven new English universities of
the 1960s: the Universities of East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Lancaster,
Sussex, Warwick and York. It explores the creation of these universities
and investigates how they each responded to a number of
centrally-imposed initiatives for change in UK higher education that
have emerged since their foundation. It discusses changes in system
governance and how the Higher Education policies it generated have
impacted upon a particular segment of the English university model.
Divided into three parts, the book first deals with such topics as the
control the University Grants' Committee exercised in its heyday and how
they initiated the launch of new universities. It then examines policy
initiatives on government cuts on grants, research assessment exercises,
quality assurance procedures and student tuition fees. The last part
takes a broader approach to change by studying the significance and
demise of Mission Groups, a changing system of Higher Education and more
general changes regarding the state, the market and governance.