Introduction
This chapter aims to provide a critical summary account of how higher education research has developed in the UK over the last seventy years. It draws attention to key authors, organisations and outputs, the changing themes and emphases of the research undertaken, and the varying links between higher education research, policy and practice. Some links are also made between the development of higher education research in the UK and the experience in other western countries. The chapter builds on and extends existing and ongoing research by the author which has examined the development of higher education in the UK and mapped the state of higher education research internationally (Tight 2003; 2009; 2012).
The chapter is organised in what might be termed a matrix fashion. This is primarily chronological, examining developments decade by decade. The secondary organisation is in terms of eight themes – teaching and learning, course design, the student experience, quality, system policy, institutional management, academic work, knowledge and research (see Tight 2012 for more details) – which together encompass the range of higher education research interests.
In putting together this chapter, I had two supplementary aims. One was to identify and honour many of the higher education researchers who have contributed to the field in the recent past (many of whom, of course, are now dead). The other aim was to demonstrate how many of our current concerns (in policy and practice, and therefore research) have echoed down the years and, indeed, long before the starting point for this analysis.
The chapter concludes with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary higher education research in the UK and with some consideration of how it might (or should) develop further in the foreseeable future.
A note on methodology
The underlying methodological approach taken in this chapter, as in much of my recent research, is what is called research synthesis or meta-analysis (Cooper 2010). In essence, this involves identifying, accessing, reading and analysing everything written on a particular topic over a given time period. Since my topic is higher education research in the UK, and my time period starts in 1945 and ends at the present day, this is quite a tall order and literally unfeasible (as some of what has been written will have been lost and other material may be unknown or difficult to access).
To make the task feasible and deliverable at chapter length, the strategy I have adopted here is to focus on academic texts (and particularly books or reports, rather than journal articles, as substantial texts), and to identify key works produced by researchers of note based in the UK (for at least part of the time) during the period. Of course, what constitutes a ‘key work’ is debatable; my selection has been informed by the citation rates of texts and their authors, and by how they have informed subsequent research.
I then selected from my initial list a smaller sample of texts – selected so as to represent the range of themes across the time period and so as not to over-reference particular individuals – to identify and discuss. Table 1.1 provides a summary of the publications selected (or rather their authors) by decade.
I would emphasise at this point that the opinions expressed and the selections made are, of course, my own; my apologies, therefore, if I have not mentioned a particular author or text that you rate highly. This is not, I would stress, simply a judgement of quality on my behalf, though I have endeavoured to select texts of good quality; a great deal has been researched and written in the last seventy years, and there is only a limited amount of space here to identify and discuss it. Thus, the empty cells in Table 1.1 do not necessarily mean that no one in the UK published anything significant on a particular theme in a given decade; this is, at least in part, selectivity at work again.
Nonetheless, my hope and intention is that anyone wanting to better understand the development of higher education research (or, indeed, higher education) in the UK since 1945 would get a reasonably comprehensive overview from consulting the texts identified in this chapter, together with my brief commentary upon them.
UK higher education research in 1945
Higher education in the UK in 1945 was very different from what we know today. The most obvious difference was the size of the activity: in 1945 there were only 49,809 university students (Carpentier 2004), while in 2012 the higher education system enrolled 2,340,275 students (www.hesa.ac.uk). Similarly, research into higher education was a much smaller-scale activity than it is today, but it did exist and had been going on to some extent virtually since higher education started. For at least some of the academics working in universities and colleges, the practice and experience of higher education has always been a topic for research that they have been unable to resist.
In the immediate post-war period there were huge pressures on the UK’s emergent higher education system (I say ‘emergent’, because the term ‘higher education’ was not in general use then, and the seventeen universities and five university colleges in existence could hardly be said to constitute a system), as there were on other socio-economic structures. These pressures included those to get infrastructure and staffing back in order, to accommodate the increasing numbers (including many demobilised service personnel) seeking a higher education and to respond to multiple government planning initiatives.
In this context, it is hardly surprising that much research and writing on higher education was focused on issues of overall policy. Thus, Nuffield College Oxford, which had set up an education sub-committee during the war in connection with the social reconstruction survey it was undertaking, reported after the war (1948) on ‘the problem facing British universities’. This problem was that of demand: both how you went about assessing the increased demand for higher education that was expected and how the universities could be enabled to satisfactorily meet this demand. They concluded:
Until additional financial resources can be translated into buildings and equipment, and additional staff can be turned out – or recruited from other countries – the doubling of the university population contemplated . . . is not possible, and even the present increase over pre-war figures by a half is excessive. (Nuffield College 1948: 86)
For others, however, the increasing demands made on the universities were worrying for more fundamental reasons. Moberly (1949) offers us an example of the ‘crisis’ literature. He was a committed Christian and chair of the University Grants Committee (UGC), the body that distributed government funds to universities. His concern was nothing less than how to (re-)Christianise the university, and exert some moral leverage, during a period of what he perceived as unprecedented worldwide threat.
The 1950s
By the 1950s, most of the immediate pressures placed on higher education after the war had begun to alleviate. In a period of steady growth, the higher education research focus turned to better understanding and improving practice.
Dale (1954), for example, was concerned with the transition from school to university, and particularly how university entrance was organised and assessed. Kelsall (1957), in an early example of a series of related studies, reported on a national study of university applications. He was particularly interested in the experience of both wo...
