American influence on British higher education: Science, technology, and the problem of university expansion, 1945-1963

Minerva

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 327-346

  Bocock, Jean ^a   Baston, Lewis ^b   Scott, Peter ^b   Smith, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

^b KINGSTON UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 4143068149     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/B:MINE.0000005154.25610.b2     Document Type: Review

References (96)

1. Edward Shils, 'The Intellectuals: Great Britain', Encounter, IV (4), (1955), 5-17.
2. See the account in Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
3. See Volker Berghahn, The Americanisation of West German Industry (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1986). Also Jonathan Zeitlin and Gary Herrigel (eds.), Americanisation and Its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Post-War Europe and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
4. See Volker Berghahn, The Americanisation of West German Industry (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1986). Also Jonathan Zeitlin and Gary Herrigel (eds.), Americanisation and Its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Post-War Europe and Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
5. One example, but rather the exception, is Walter Harry Armytage, American Influence on English Education (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 165-179.
6. Anthony Sampson, The New Europeans (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968), 181.
7. Committee on Higher Education, Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the chairmanship of Lord Robbins, Cmd. 2154 (London: HMSO, 1963). The committee commenced work in 1961, but significant expansion was under way before the report was published.
8. Martin Trow, Problems in the Transition from Elite to Mass Higher Education (Berkeley: Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1973).
9. MIT was one of the leading American technological institutions with high-profile recognition in Britain and continental Europe. For an interesting account of some of the discussions about the establishment of a British MIT, see James Jackson Walsh, 'Postgraduate Technological Education in Britain: Events Leading to the Establishment of Churchill College, Cambridge, 1950-1958', Minerva, 36 (2), (1998), 147-177.
10. Productivity became an increasingly important element of Marshall Aid and countries were encouraged to set national production targets as a pre-requisite for the receipt of aid. See Hogan, op. cit. note 2, 23.
11. Ralf Dahrendorf, LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895-1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). The LSE, Cambridge and University College London were among those to benefit; see Vivian H. Green, The Universities (London: Penguin Books, 1969), especially ch. 9. For further examples, and the wider context, see Giuliana Gemelli and Roy MacLeod (eds.), American Foundations in Europe: Scientific Policies, Cultural Diplomacy and Trans-Atlantic Relations, 1920-1980 (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2003).
12. Ralf Dahrendorf, LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895-1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). The LSE, Cambridge and University College London were among those to benefit; see Vivian H. Green, The Universities (London: Penguin Books, 1969), especially ch. 9. For further examples, and the wider context, see Giuliana Gemelli and Roy MacLeod (eds.), American Foundations in Europe: Scientific Policies, Cultural Diplomacy and Trans-Atlantic Relations, 1920-1980 (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2003).
13. Ralf Dahrendorf, LSE: A History of the London School of Economics and Political Science, 1895-1995 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). The LSE, Cambridge and University College London were among those to benefit; see Vivian H. Green, The Universities (London: Penguin Books, 1969), especially ch. 9. For further examples, and the wider context, see Giuliana Gemelli and Roy MacLeod (eds.), American Foundations in Europe: Scientific Policies, Cultural Diplomacy and Trans-Atlantic Relations, 1920-1980 (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2003).
14. Both fundamental research and scientific documentation were helped by Rockefeller funding. See Pamela Spence Richards, 'Great Britain and Allied Scientific Information, 1939-1945', Minerva, 26 (2), (1988), 177-198.
15. Jacqueline McGlade, 'The US Technical Assistance and Productivity Program and the Education of Western European Managers, 1948-1958', in Terry Gourvish and Nick Tiratsoo (eds.), Missionaries and Managers: American Influences on European Management Education, 1945-1960 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 14.
16. Anglo-American Productivity Council, Universities and Industry (London: Anglo-American Productivity Council, 1951), was one report the Council commissioned illustrating its wide-ranging brief.
17. 'Liberal' has diverse meanings in Britain and the US, which have also changed over time. Here, we refer to that American vision of a tolerant society, open to talent and respectful of individual differences, and to a 'non-ideological' approach to politics that could still offer the prospect of social reform. See, for example, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Center: A Fighting Faith (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1949).
18. Peter Hennessy, Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 (London: Random House, 1993), 293.
19. One agency established to further such a programme was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). See Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books, 1999). Cultural exports ranged from 'high' culture to broad-based information on the American way of life, designed to counteract Communist perceptions.
20. Hogan, op. cit. note 2, 22.
21. 'This sense of a society with limitless possibilities for all, largely (though not exclusively) through higher education', is how Trow has characterized the American Dream. Martin Trow, 'From Mass Higher Education to Universal Access', Minerva, 37 (4), (1999), 303-328.
22. David P. Dolowitz and David Marsh, 'Who Learns What from Whom: A Review of the Policy Transfer Literature', Political Studies, XLIV (2), (1996), 343-357. For a more detailed discussion of such concepts applied to higher education, see David Smith, Lewis Baston, Jean Bocock, and Peter Scott, 'Americanisation and UK Higher Education: Towards a History of Transatlantic Influence on Policy and Practice', Journal of Education Policy, 17 (4), (2002), 443-461.
23. David P. Dolowitz and David Marsh, 'Who Learns What from Whom: A Review of the Policy Transfer Literature', Political Studies, XLIV (2), (1996), 343-357. For a more detailed discussion of such concepts applied to higher education, see David Smith, Lewis Baston, Jean Bocock, and Peter Scott, 'Americanisation and UK Higher Education: Towards a History of Transatlantic Influence on Policy and Practice', Journal of Education Policy, 17 (4), (2002), 443-461.
24. Ministry of Education, Higher Technological Education. Report of a Special Committee (the Percy Report) (London: HMSO, 1945).
25. Scientific Manpower: Report of a Committee appointed by the Lord President of the Council (the Barlow Report), Cmnd. 6842 (London: HMSO, 1946). This committee had a wider manpower brief, but was asked to report as a matter of urgency on the needs of scientific education.
26. R.A. Butler, when Minister of Education during the war, and Ellen Wilkinson, the first Minister of Education in the post-war Labour government, both considered bringing the universities within the remit of the Ministry of Education, a proposal fiercely resisted by the universities.
27. Herbert Morrison, then Lord President, was a powerful figure, being Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and previously a member of the wartime coalition government.
28. Zuoyue Wang, 'The First World War, Academic Science, and the "Two Cultures": Educational Reforms at the University of Cambridge', Minerva, 33 (2), (1995), 107-127.
29. Committee on the Position of Natural Science in the Educational System in Great Britain, Natural Science in Education (the Thompson Report) (London: HMSO, 1918). Cited in Zuoyue Wang, ibid.
30. Committee on the Position of Natural Science in the Educational System in Great Britain, Natural Science in Education (the Thompson Report) (London: HMSO, 1918). Cited in Zuoyue Wang, ibid.
31. Renate Simpson, How the PhD came to Britain: A Century of Struggle for Postgraduate Education (Guildford: Society for Research into Higher Education, 1983).
32. William Alexander Stewart, Higher Education in Post-War Britain (London: Macmillan, 1989) 16.
33. David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: The Fontana History of Germany, 1780-1918 (London: Fontana Press, 1997), 313.
34. Lord Ashby, 'Centre and Periphery in Academe: Some Personal Reflections', Minerva, 34 (1), (1996), 95-101.
35. Sheldon Rothblatt, The Modern University and its Discontents: The Fate of Newman's Legacies in Britain and America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 47.
36. Roy MacLeod, 'Secrets Among Friends: The Research Information Service and the "Special Relationship" in Allied Scientific Information and Intelligence, 1916-1918', Minerva, 37 (3), (1999), 201-233.
37. Simpson, op. cit. note 26.
38. The Percy Report, op. cit. note 20, 5.
39. Public Records Office (Kew), University Grants Committee 46/295, Clement Attlee to Ernest Bevin, 29 January 1945. At the time, Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister in the wartime coalition government, but shortly thereafter became Prime Minister in the post-war Labour government. Ernest Bevin was then Minister of Labour, and subsequently Foreign Secretary.
40. Stewart, op. cit. note 27, 80.
41. There was a failure to agree whether the new higher-technological qualification should be a degree (which universities had monopoly powers to award), or a diploma to signify a new and distinctive type of course. See, in particular, the concluding Note by the chairman, Lord Eustace Percy, attempting to find a way out of the dilemma. The Percy Report, op. cit. note 20, 25-27.
42. Rosemary Vipond, 'A Study of Government Policy-Making in Higher Technological Education, 1944-1968', (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Leeds, 1982), 60.
43. Vannevar Bush, Science - the Endless Frontier (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1945, reprinted 1960, 1983). Bush, who prepared the report at the personal request of the President, was both President of MIT and head of the American wartime science organization, OSRD.
44. Patrick (later Lord) Blackett (1897-1974) was a Labour Party member, held a professorship at Manchester University and later Imperial College, and had worked on scientific projects concerned with defence (particularly radar and operational research) before and during the war. Solly (later Baron) Zuckerman (1904-1993) was a professor at Birmingham and had also spent the war years in scientific work for the military. Charles Percy (later Lord) Snow worked at the Ministry of Labour during the war and had responsibility for the allocation of scientists.
45. Lord Cherwell, scientific adviser to Churchill during the war, and subsequently Paymaster General; Sir Lawrence Bragg, a member of the Percy Committee; and Sir Edward Appleton, a member of the Barlow Committee, were three such advocates.
46. The Percy Report, op. cit. note 20, 22.
47. With acknowledgement to Nick Tiratsoo, 'What you need is a Harvard', in Gourvish and Tiratsoo (eds.), op. cit. note 12, 140-154.
48. The American Mutual Security Act, 1951 was designed, inter alia, 'to encourage, where suitable, competition and productivity'. Section 156.
49. Imperial College of Science and Technology was perhaps the most prestigious. Cambridge, of course, had an outstanding international reputation in science, but the university was highly regarded in many disciplinary areas and its public profile was not exclusively scientific.
50. Rolf Torstendahl, 'The Transformation of Professional Education in the Nineteenth Century', in Sheldon Rothblatt and Bjorn Wittrock (eds.), The European and American University since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 137.
51. P.M.S. Blackett, 'The Idea of a University: Training for the Professions', first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme, and reprinted in The Listener, 6 April 1950, 603. The reference to an 'American mission' is presumably to the work of the Anglo-American Productivity Council.
52. Walsh, 'Postgraduate Technological Education in Britain', op. cit. note 8, 153.
53. Ibid., 153. The discussions illustrate this confusion over objectives.
54. Peter Ray, 'Impressions of Technology', Universities Quarterly, VI (1-4), (1951-1952), 257-261.
55. Ibid., 261.
56. UGC, A Note on Technology in the Universities (London: University Grants Committee, 1950).
57. PRO-UGC 7/864, Committee of Vice-Chancellors, 'Qualifications for Students of Colleges of Technology', May 1949.
58. Rothblatt, op. cit. note 30, 45.
59. Following the Percy and Barlow reports, there were reports on the subject from the Parliamentary Select Committee (1947), the Institute of Physics (1948), the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, Higher Technological Education (London: HMSO, 1948), and the Federation of British Industry, The Education and Training of Technologists (London: HMSO, 1949). See also Ministry of Education, Education for Management. Management Subjects in Technical and Commercial Colleges (the Urwick Report) (London: HMSO, 1947), and Ministry of Education, Report of a Special Committee on Education for Commerce (the Carr-Saunders Report) (London: HMSO, 1949).
60. Following the Percy and Barlow reports, there were reports on the subject from the Parliamentary Select Committee (1947), the Institute of Physics (1948), the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, Higher Technological Education (London: HMSO, 1948), and the Federation of British Industry, The Education and Training of Technologists (London: HMSO, 1949). See also Ministry of Education, Education for Management. Management Subjects in Technical and Commercial Colleges (the Urwick Report) (London: HMSO, 1947), and Ministry of Education, Report of a Special Committee on Education for Commerce (the Carr-Saunders Report) (London: HMSO, 1949).
61. Following the Percy and Barlow reports, there were reports on the subject from the Parliamentary Select Committee (1947), the Institute of Physics (1948), the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, Higher Technological Education (London: HMSO, 1948), and the Federation of British Industry, The Education and Training of Technologists (London: HMSO, 1949). See also Ministry of Education, Education for Management. Management Subjects in Technical and Commercial Colleges (the Urwick Report) (London: HMSO, 1947), and Ministry of Education, Report of a Special Committee on Education for Commerce (the Carr-Saunders Report) (London: HMSO, 1949).
62. Following the Percy and Barlow reports, there were reports on the subject from the Parliamentary Select Committee (1947), the Institute of Physics (1948), the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, Higher Technological Education (London: HMSO, 1948), and the Federation of British Industry, The Education and Training of Technologists (London: HMSO, 1949). See also Ministry of Education, Education for Management. Management Subjects in Technical and Commercial Colleges (the Urwick Report) (London: HMSO, 1947), and Ministry of Education, Report of a Special Committee on Education for Commerce (the Carr-Saunders Report) (London: HMSO, 1949).
63. The abrupt termination of wartime Lend-Lease arrangements, the convertibility crisis of 1947, and the devaluation of sterling in 1949 had severe financial effects, increasing pressures to improve productivity/exports. See Hennessy, op. cit. note 15, especially chapters 8 and 9.
64. UGC, op. cit. note 51. The UGC advocated the expansion of existing university departments of technology.
65. The Advisory Council on Scientific Policy, Higher Technological Education, op. cit. note 54, argued for university-based courses and more institutions 'with the character of Imperial College' in close association with universities.
66. 58 Vipond, op. cit. note 37, 51.
67. Federation of British Industry, Higher Technological Education: Report of a Study Visit to the US (London: Federation of British Industry, 1950).
68. Anglo-American Productivity Council, Universities and Industry, op. cit. note 13.
69. Ibid., 14. This issue has been debated repeatedly over the years, usually as to whether Britain needs more graduates or more technician-level (two-year) qualifications such as the HND.
70. Higher Technological Education: Statement of Government Policy, Cmd. 8357 (London: HMSO, 1951). Labour lost power and a new Conservative government was elected in October 1951.
71. House of Commons Debates, Hansard, Vol. 502 (11 June 1952), col. 304. For the background to this announcement see James Jackson Walsh, 'Higher Technological Education in Britain: The Case of the Manchester Municipal College of Technology', Minerva, 34 (3), (1996), especially 241-243.
72. House of Commons Debates, Hansard, Vol. 502 (11 June 1952), col. 304. For the background to this announcement see James Jackson Walsh, 'Higher Technological Education in Britain: The Case of the Manchester Municipal College of Technology', Minerva, 34 (3), (1996), especially 241-243.
73. The American Mutual Security Act, 1951. Section 516.
74. PRO-UGC 7/905, Memo from 'AET' (probably Arthur Truman, then chairman of the UGC) concerning a visit by Dr Angus MacFarlane of the UK Scientific Mission in Washington to discuss the implications of the MSA for British higher education, 3 July 1952.
75. PRO-UGC 7/905, Hale (UGC) to Rossiter (Treasury), 11 July 1952.
76. PRO-UGC 7/905, W.L. Batt, Head of the MSA in London expressed support for the former, and Lincoln Gordon (an MSA colleague) actively promoted the latter in discussions with 'influential people'. Finally, a White Paper Programme of Expenditure of Counterpart Funds derived from United States Economic Aid, Cmd. 8918 (July 1953) listed an agreed set of projects costing over £3 million.
77. PRO-UGC 7/905, Playfair (Treasury) to Hale (UGC), 14 May 1953.
78. Lord Cherwell continued to have powerful friends in influential (including political) circles. See Walsh, op. cit. note 8, for a detailed account of this lobbying and the personalities involved.
79. PRO-FO 1109/93, Technological Education, Lord Cherwell to the inter-departmental committee, December 1955.
80. PRO-FO 1109/93, 1955, Memorandum from the Secretary of the UGC to the interdepartmental committee.
81. PRO-ED 46/754, 1951. Flemming (Deputy Secretary) to Sir John Maud (Permanent Secretary), Ministry of Education, 'Is there to be a policy and, if so, how is it to be presented to the universities?'
82. Sir Keith Murray served ten years as Chairman from 1953-1963.
83. By 1956, the UGC had sought Treasury guidance about UGC projections on the expansion necessary to meet likely student demand. This was discussed politically at the highest levels.
84. David (later Lord) Eccles was appointed Minister of Education in 1954.
85. Ministry of Education, Technical Education, Cmd. 9703 (London: HMSO 1956). The CATs were not new institutions, but selected technical colleges, ten in all, upgraded and expanded in line with the recommendations in the Percy Report. They all became universities after 1963, following the recommendations of the Robbins Report.
86. Sandwich courses combine periods of academic study with structured industrial experience.
87. Committee on Higher Education, op. cit. note 6. The Robbins report recommended the major expansion of higher education in the UK, increasing both student numbers and universities, including all the CATs.
88. Nigel G. McCulloch, 'Industry and Science', Universities Quarterly, VI (1), (1951), 40-47.
89. Rothblatt and Wittrock (eds.), op. cit. note 45, 8.
90. Nick Tiratsoo, op. cit. note 12, 140.
91. Walsh, op. cit. note 8, 166.
92. Albert Henry Halsey (ed.), Ability and Educational Opportunity: Report of a Conference (Paris: OECD, 1961), 24.
93. Jean Floud, 'Social Class Factors in Educational Opportunity', in Halsey (ed.), ibid., 108.
94. Ministry of Education, Technical Education, Cmd. 9703 (London: HMSO 1956).
95. The 'white heat' slogan was associated with the Labour Party prior in 1964, when Labour gained power for the first time since 1951. Harold Wilson, the Labour leader, strongly associated himself and the Labour Party with modernizing themes, of which technology and higher education expansion were the most important.
96. Ronald B. Thompson, The Impending Tidal Wave of Students (New York: American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 1954).