Abstract
Although the UGC, as revealed in its reports on the university system, was aware that there would eventually need for existing universities to expand in order to accommodate growing student demand, it can be claimed that it was slow to recognise this evolving pressure. In fact when the existing new universities refused categorically to expand sufficiently to meet the projected additional student numbers, it resorted to the strategy of proposing the founding of new universities. It, then, justified this on the grounds that there was a growing need for experimentation in the organisation of knowledge and that newly founded universities would be better able to achieve this. Having achieved government funding for the expansion of the system, the UGC set up procedures for the creation of new universities, of which the approach from Sussex was the first to be reviewed. The Sussex bid established some general parameters; an Academic Board would set up inter-disciplinary degree programmes, the institution would have the university title and be able to award postgraduate degrees, the local authorities would provide a site of at least 200 acres and some initial financial support. The Sussex initiative was followed by six other English foundations, and the University of Stirling in Scotland and the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of how different these universities actually were concluding, with the general consensus, that they were academically innovative rather than new!
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Beloff, M. (1968). The plateglass universities. London: Secker and Warburg.
Briggs, A. (1991). A founding father reflects. Higher Education Quarterly, 45(4), 311–332.
Carswell, J. (1986). The government and the universities. Cambridge: University Press.
Daiches, D. (1964). The idea of a new university: An experiment in sussex. London: Deutsch Press.
Goddard, J., & Vallance, P. (2013). The university and the city. New York, Routledge.
Halsey, A. H. (1995). Decline of donnish dominion: The British academic profession in the twentieth century. USA: Oxford University Press.
Perkin, H. J. (1969). New universities in the United Kingdom. Case studies on innovation in higher education. Paris: OECD.
Perkin, H. J. (1970). New universities in the United Kingdom. Paris: OECD.
Robinson, E. (1968). The new polytechnics: The people’s universities. London: Penguin Press.
Rhodes, J. R. (1997). Understanding governance. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Shattock, M. (Ed.). (1996). The creation of a university system. Blackwells: Oxford.
University Grants Committee (UGC). (1962). University development 1952–1957. London: UGC.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Filippakou, O., Tapper, T. (2019). Founding the New Universities of the 1960s: Interpreting the UGC’s Strategy. In: Creating the Future? The 1960s New English Universities. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06091-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06091-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06090-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06091-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)