Professions, elites, and universities in England, 1870-1970

Historical Journal

Volumn 47, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 941-962

  Schwarz, Leonard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33748296669     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X04004054     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. University Grants Committee, Report for the period 1929-30 to 1934-35 (London, 1936), pp. 52-3.
2. This gives full-time students and differs from some other figures, such as R. D. Anderson, Universities and elites in Britain since 1800 (Basingstoke, 1992), pp. 22-3, from where the figure for 1871 has been derived.
3. For 1963/4: Higher education: report of the committee appointed by the prime minister (Robbins report), App. 2A, p. 19.
4. Anderson, Universities and elites, p. 9.
5. A. Miles, 'How open was nineteenth-century British society? Social mobility and equality of opportunity, 1839-1914', in A. Miles and D. Vincent, Building European society (Manchester, 1993), pp. 31-3, discusses the move from informal patronage to a more structured method of engagement, but the period chosen (1723-1914) is long and the discussion inevitably general.
6. The most recent work on social mobility before 1939 has tended to restrict itself to the lower middle classes and the working classes: see for instance A. Miles, Social mobility in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England (Basingstoke, 1999), passim, and the various references in pp. 92, 118, 144, 181-3.
7. D. A. Coppock, 'Respectability as a prerequisite of moral character: the social and occupational mobility of pupil teachers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries', History of Education, 26 (1997), 165-86, inevitably has a lower-middle-class/artisan orientation.
8. A summary of Weber's argument, put forward by F. Parkin, 'Strategics of social closure in class formation', in F. Parkin, ed., The social analysis of class structure (London, 1974), p. 3.
9. Any attempt at a full list is superfluous. For historians the locus classicus is of course H. Perkin, The rise of professional society (London, 1989).
10. Penelope J. Corfield, Power and the professions in Britain 1700-1850 (London, 1995), puts the later changes into a longer perspective.
11. For gender, see, for instance, Anne Witz, Professions and patriarchy (London, 1992).
12. For one international comparison among others, see M. Sarfatti Larson, The rise of professionalism: a sociological analysis (Berkeley, 1977).
13. For these, see Andrew Abbott, The system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor (Chicago, 1988).
14. See F. Musgrove, 'Middle-class education and employment in the nineteenth century', Economic History Review, 12 (1959-60), pp. 99-111.
15. and the reply by H.J. Perkin, 'Middle-class education and employment in the nineteenth century: a critical note', Economic History Review, 14 (1961-2), pp. 122-30.
16. as well as the much more cautious estimates offered in F. Musgrove, The migratory elite (London, 1963), pp. 24-7.
17. For contemporary lamentations, see for instance The Spectator, 63 (1889), p. 363: 'It has become a truism to say that of all who start on professional careers, one-third go-under - that is, get sick, die or emigrate.' That this was a particularly new situation will be seriously doubted by anybody with the slightest knowledge of the eighteenth century.
18. J. Roach, Public examinations in England 1850-1900 (Cambridge, 1971).
19. Miles, Social mobility, pp. 92, 118, 144, 181-3.
20. J. A. Banks, Prosperity and parenthood: a study of family planning among the Victorian middle classes (London, 1954), ch. 11, 'The cost of children'.
21. Laurie Magnus, The jubilee book of the Girls' Public Day School Trust, 1873-1923 (Cambridge, 1923), pp. 184-5.
22. G. Millerson, The qualifying associations (London, 1964), pp. 121-9.
23. King Edward VI Schools Archive, Birmingham: Report for year ending 23 Feb. 1894. He must have meant the London External BA degree.
24. Royal Commission on Secondary Education (Bryce Commission), 9 vols., 1895, Cmd 7862, Report, pp. 219-20.
25. T. More, Utopia (London, 1961), p. 76. I owe this reference to Elizabeth Claydon.
26. 'In those schools, of which a considerable number are under the management of die Girls' Public Day Schools Company and the Church Schools Company, while others arc endowed schools or local proprietary schools, some university certificate of intellectual attainment is almost invariably demanded, and a university degree is more frequently required than in private schools or from private governesses.' Clara Collet, 'Prospects of marriage for women', The Nineteenth Century, Apr. 1892, p. 548.
27. R. H. Tawney, Secondary education for all: a policy for Labour (London, 1922), p. 114.
28. P. Gardner, 'Teacher training and changing professional identity in early twentieth-century England', Journal of Education for Teaching, 21 (1995), pp. 191-217.
29. P. Gardner, 'Teacher training and changing professional identity in early twentieth-century England', Journal of Education for Teaching, 21 (1995), Ibid., pp. 208-11. Oxbridge students may have been less inclined to regard a diploma as necessary.
30. W. R. Niblet, D. W. Humphreys, and J. R. Fairhurst, The university connection (Windsor, 1975), p. 26.
31. Janet Howarth and Mark Curthoys, 'The polidcal economy of women's higher education in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain', Historical Research, 30 (1987), p. 220.
32. Bryce Commission, vol. II, p. 173, qq. 1707-14. Most of the headmistresses of the more recently opened Girls' Public Day School Trust schools had been to Oxford or Cambridge.
33. Clara Collet, 'The economic position of educated working women' (1890), republished in Clara Collet, Educated working women: essays on the economic position of women workers in the middle classes (London, 1902), p. 13.
34. See also: Clara Collet, 'The expenditure of middle-class working women', Economic Journal (Dec. 1898).
35. Clara Collet, Economic Journal, 1898 and idem, 'Prospects of marriage for women', p. 548:1, 500 such women in England. The differential remained: in 1945 the starting salary for a graduate secondary schoolmistress outside London was £216.
36. a non-graduate elementary schoolmistresses started at £174, a student nurse £95 and a staff nurse £120: P. Summerfield, 'Women and the professional labour market 1900-1950: the case of the secondary schoolmistress', in P. Summerfield, ed., Women, education and the professions (History of Education Society, occasional publication no. 8, Leicester, 1987), pp. 37-52, at p. 39.
37. Speech by Mrs Sidgwick on opening of new King Edwards Girls High School, Birmingham: Birmingham Daily Post, 27 Nov. 1896.
38. E. Allison Peers, writing under the name of Bruce Truscot, Red Brick University (London, 1943), p. 153.
39. E. Ives, D. Drummond, and L. Schwarz, The first civic university: Birmingham, 1880-1380: an introductory history (Birmingham, 2000), p. 261.
40. E. Ives, D. Drummond, and L. Schwarz, The first civic university: Birmingham, 1880-1380: an introductory history, 2000, Ibid., pp. 258-9, for more detailed figures.
41. Truscot, Red Brick University, p. 154.
42. reference to National Union of Students, Graduate employment: a report of the 1937 Congress of the NUS (London), pp. 17-19.
43. R. Lewis and A. Maude, Professional people (London, 1952), pp. 225-6.
44. Ministry of Education, Education in Britain, 1964-5.
45. S. P. Keeble, The ability to manage: a study of British management, 1890-1990 (Manchester, 1992), pp. 78-9.
46. Manchester University Record Office: VC269. Letter from the 'provincial Universities': Durham, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Reading, co-ordinated by-Grant Robertson, chairman of the CVCP.
47. The Inns of Court did provide their own education, but a university degree was preferable, and that preferably at Oxbridge.
48. Richard L. Abel, The legal profession in England and Wales (Oxford, 1988), p. 47.
49. Richard L. Abel, The legal profession in England and Wales, 1988, Ibid., p. 386.
50. Richard L. Abel, The legal profession in England and Wales, 1988, Ibid., pp. 388-9.
51. Banks, Prosperity and parenthood, p. 177.
52. Brian Abel-Smith and R. Stevens, Lawyers and the courts: a sociological study of die English legal system, 1750-1965 (London, 1967), p. 349.
53. Abel, Legal profession, p. 163.
54. Report of the Committee on Legal Education (HMSO, 1971: Cmd 4595), p. 112.
55. S. P. Walker, The Society of Accountants in Edinburgh, 1854-1914: a study of recruitment to a new profession (New York, 1988), p. 125.
56. Quoted in Lewis and Maude, Professional people, p. 227.
57. Robbins report, Evidence - Part 1, vol. A, p. 325.
58. Robbins Report, vol. A, This interchange is taken from ibid., pp. 325-30.
59. These examples are all drawn from Warwick University Modem Records Centre, MSS 399/3/ACCI.
60. Ibid. Negotiations of CVCP with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, Report of joint Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, 15 Apr. 1971.
61. There had been some exemptions made in 1944; in 1971 the joint committee assured the CVCP that there was 'increasing acceptance ... of subjects for subject exemptions', but did not provide any statistics: Warwick Modern Records Centre: 399/3/ACC/I, letter to CVCP from secretary of Accountants Education Committee, 27 May 1971.
62. letter to CVCP 10 Mar. 1971 for the claim of increasing acceptance.
63. This discussion is deliberately restricted to England. Teachers may well have been even more important in Wales, but this demands a study of its own. Scotland is sui generis.
64. R. Dahrendorf, LSE: a history of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895-1995 (Oxford, 1995), p. 88.
65. Sheldon Rothblatt, 'The diversification of higher education in England', in K. H. Jarausch, ed., The transformation of higher learning, 1860-1930 (Stuttgart, 1982), pp. 137-8.
66. Truscot, Red Brick University.
67. M. Sanderson, The universities and British industry, 1850-1970 (London, 1972), discusses Appointment Boards at various points in his book, inevitably with reference to industry. The reports of the Appointment Boards suggest a concentration on industry, with non-technical staff likely to go into sales: see for instance the Report of Birmingham University's Employment Board, 1938-9 which lists some of the jobs where graduates were placed during 1938 and 1939.
68. Roy Lowe, 'Structural change in English higher education, 1870-1920', in D. F. Miiller, F. Ringer, and B. Simon, eds., The rise of the modem educational system (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 163-78, at p. 170.
69. Birmingham Daily Post, 14 Oct. 1901.
70. Misquoted in Ives et al., The first civic university, p. 143.
71. University of Birmingham Special Collections: Senate Minutes, 22 Oct. 1924.
72. Barbara M. D. Smith, Business education in the university of Birmingham, 1899-1965 (2nd edn, Birmingham, 1990), p. 15.
73. Sanderson, The universities and British industry, pp. 210-12.
74. G.J. Butland, The Prof, and Penny (Kent Town, Australia, 1986), pp. 17-26.
75. University of Birmingham Special Collections: Senate Minutes, 22 Feb. 1914.
76. Mason College, the ancestor of Birmingham University, was doing this from the start, with each side suspicious that the other was gaining more than its fair share: Ives et al., The first civic university, pp. 42-4. The topic of medical education is of course far too large to be handled here, each city being different and complex.
77. Ives et al., The first civic university, Ibid., pp. 38-9.
78. E. Barker, 'Universities in Great Britain', in W. M. Kotsching and E. Prys, eds., Universities in a changing world (London, 1932).
79. Ministry of Education, Report of a Special Committee on Education for Commerce (HMSO, 1949), p. 39.
80. E. Green, Debtors to their profession (London, 1979), p. 147. This was Lord Balfour.
81. Bankers Magazine (Dec. 1952), p. 470.
82. quoted in Green, Debtors, p. 146.
83. Times, leader, 21 Sept. 1955.
84. Charles Masterman, The condition of England (London, 1911 edn), p. 76.
85. J. H. Farrant, 'Trends in admissions', in O. Fulton, ed., Access to higher education (Society for Research into Higher Education, Guildford, 1981), p. 86.
86. R. K. Kelsall, Report on an inquiry into applications for admission to universities (London, 1957), table 14.
87. Robbins report, Evidence, App. 2B, p. 428.
88. G. Routh, Occupation and pay in Great Britain, 1906-1979 (London, 1980), pp. 6-7, 221-5.
89. Ives et al., The first civic university, pp. 383-6.
90. see also Alison Gaukroger and Leonard Schwarz, 'A university and its region: student recruitment to Birmingham, 1945-1975', Oxford Review of Education, 23 (1997). pp. 185-202.
91. M. Sanderson, The History of the University of East Anglia (London, 2002), pp. 57-8.