The Crisis of the University

Originally published in 1984, The Crisis of the University looks at the way in which changes to intellectual life relate to the development of the different institutions that make up higher education. It examines the evolution of the liberal university that flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries into the modern university that has grown up since 1945. It also looks at the more detailed experience of British higher education, with separate chapters on what the Robbins expansion meant for the universities and why it was thought necessary to construct an alternative in the shape of the polytechnics. Looking to the future, the book argues first that the present structure of British higher education needs reform and speculates on the future intellectual and social demands that may be made of higher education.