OxCHEPS Statistics

Statistics on Higher Education

History/Size/Shape/Structure

1) On this page we seek to provide a very basic statistical picture of the growth of British HE during the twentieth century, and we provide data on the current composition of students within HE and on the current shape of the system.

Not only has the size and structure of British HE altered, but one of the most significant changes of the twentieth century was the movement from an elite to a mass/ mainstream higher education system.

As concern over the aims of education, and how well it met the needs of a changing economy and society began to surface in the 1960s and 1970s, the political significance of HE began to dramatically increase, as symbolized by the transfer of power from the academically-driven UGC and UFC to the corporate, business-like approach with HEFCE adopted, particularly with regard to institution funding.

The Dearing Report, regarded by mainly as one of the most important pieces of educational legislation, sets out the goals of HE in its opening statement

‘’ The purpose of education is life-enhancing: it contributes to the whole quality of life. This recognition of the purpose of higher education in the development of our people, our society, and our economy is central to our vision. In the next century, the economically successful nations will be those which become learning societies: where all are committed, through effective education and training, to lifelong learning….. In that learning society, higher education will make a distinctive contribution through teaching at its highest level, the pursuit of scholarship and research, and increasingly through its contribution to lifelong learning. National need and demand from students will require a resumed expansion of student numbers, young and mature, full-time and part-time. But over the next decade, higher education will face challenges as well as opportunities. The effectiveness of its responses to these, and its commitment to quality and standards, will shape its future.’’

HE must not only educate future generations, it must expand in line with the needs of consumers and stakeholders, and also be responsible with the taxpayers’ money it receives.

Education, and HE in particular, is seen as central to future successful economic growth.

2) As the following tables demonstrates the only real growth of overall participation in education was effectively post-War: the 1944 Education Act not only raised the school leaving age, but provided a ‘ladder of opportunity’ for secondary education. This inturn allowed HE to move away from being a continuation of the private schools system in the UK.

Report Of The National Committee Of Inquiry Into Higher Education, Chaired by Lord Robbins,
HMSO, 1962.

3) Furthermore, the majority of the percentage rise, pre-Robbins, took place between 1954 and 1962 and that the majority of that rise took place in Teacher Training and Further Education: as the following tables indicate.

Report Of The National Committee Of Inquiry Into Higher Education, Chaired by Lord Robbins,
HMSO, 1962.

4) The 4%-7% which received a university education effectively ran the country, businesss, church and in imperial ages, the world. As the following two figures demonstrate access to university education was still overwhelmingly the preserve of Social Classes I, II, and III.

Anderson, R. D. ‘Universities and Elites in Britain since 1800’, Macmillan, 1992.

Report Of The National Committee Of Inquiry Into Higher Education, Chaired by Lord Robbins,
HMSO, 1962.

5) When the first major (planned) expansion of HE in the twentieth century took place following the delivery of the report of the National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education chaired by Lord Robbins in 1962, the shape of participation in HE in terms of institutional spread in 1962/63 was still little changed from its pre-War norms.

Report Of The National Committee Of Inquiry Into Higher Education, Chaired by Lord Robbins,
HMSO, 1962.

6) But in two waves of expansion (one prompted by Lord Robbins’s Report and one by the creation of the ‘New Universities’ out of the former polytechnics in the early 1990s) the change in the rates of overall participation was dramatic.

Smith, D. and Langslow, A. (1999) The Idea of a University. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1999

7) As for the current student population within British HE, and the current spread of HEIs, see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2005/05_10/05_10c.pdf