Perestroika in the Universities

by Elie Kedourie

Classical liberals have long argued that the independence of the universities from the state is endangered by over-reliance on government funding. In Education for Democrats (1964) Professors Alan Peacock and Jack Wiseman questioned whether the Robbins Committee was correct in supposing that university independence was assured if student fees comprised only 20 per cent of income. They advocated an alternative system of funding based on vouchers and student loans. The same theme was pursued by Crew and Young in Paying for Degrees (1977). More recently Professor H. S. Ferns took up the cudgels on behalf of university independence in How Much Freedom for Universities? (1982). He pointed out that until the mid-nineteenth century universities lived wholly on fees, endowments, donations and the sale of services. Reliance on state funding grew steadily through the 1930s but it was not until the 1963 Robbins Report that the balance changed dramatically. Professor Ferns warned that by the early 1980s the University Grants Committee had already turned into a controlling bureaucracy imposing on the universities a rigid homogeneity incompatible with the purposes of higher education.

Professor Kedourie's Perestroika in the Universities is the latest in this long line of IEA studies revealing the dangers of over-reliance on state funding. The Education Reform Act enforces tight official control over all aspects of university life, despite amendments in Parliament. Accused of being cartels of producer interests, of charging unnecessarily high 'unit costs', of giving too low a 'social return' on taxpayers' investments, universities now face a degree of central control over their activities reminiscent of the absolutism of an earlier Europe. Professor Kedourie argues that each university is sui generis and that the Government's imposition of central control runs clean counter to their declared aim of greater autonomy. Councils and Committees proliferate and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals works in unholy harmony with the DES.

54 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 1989

About the author

Elie Kedourie, CBE, FBA was a British historian of the Middle East. He wrote from a liberal perspective, dissenting from many points of view taken as orthodox in the field. He was at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 1953 to 1990, becoming Professor of Politics.