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British Higher Education

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  So much food for historical thought...
  
  The last I heard, Gildas was reckoned to have had an rhetorical education. So much for 409/410 marking the 'end of Roman Britain'...
  
  Moving on, it's claimed by some that the University of Oxford dates from the 800s, but the documents that are alleged to demonstrate this are kept locked away, so I have my doubts. Oxford is, however, undoubtedly the oldest university in the English speaking world, and was certainly in existence by the end of the 11th century. It received a great boost in the 12th century, when English students were expelled from the University of Paris.
  
  Scotland has several universities that date from the 15th/16th century, but none of them adopted the College system that was well established at Oxford by that time. Perhaps, in the age of the Auld Alliance, the Scots were more inclined to look to France for inspiration than England.
  
  Trinity College Dublin should, I think, be considered an English/British institution, historically speaking. It was monopolised by the Ascendency for several centuries (I know nowt of UCD's history).
  
  The University of London, such as it is (federal, rather than collegiate), came into existence in the 1820s/30s, with the foundation of the High Anglican King's College and the rival 'Godless Institution of Gower Street', ie University College. It was London students who first began to identify themselves by wearing striped scarves in colours particular to their institution.
  
  What of the polytechnics, as they were? Despite being a Huddersfield reject, I know little of their history. Some are nearly a couple of hundred years old now, having their roots in Mechanics' Institutes etc. Just how old are they, and when did they start awarding degrees?
  
  When did it become expected that someone attending university would actually take a degree? I gather the future Henry V was at the Queen's College, but I don't think he actually 'graduated'.

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  Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  
  What a pity that the long tradition of firmly rooted F.E. has been debased by well-meaning idiots and politicians (not always the same thing) into the present Caucus race ("Everybody has won so they must all have prizes")
  In the 60s I was proud to be a girl from a working-class family going to a Training College. My friends and I, going to college or uni, were conscious that we had opportunities denied to people of our parents' generation; we felt inspired to succeed for their sake as well as our own. We all had grants, we could not have gone, otherwise. One of my friends, with an invalid father, even sent money home!
  Look what we have come to now. I despair, I really do.

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  Posted by Catigern (U14419012) on Saturday, 3rd December 2011

  I agree, raundsgirl. If FE colleges, polytechnics etc are all really universities now, then who is doing the valuable job that they did previously...?

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  Posted by Patrick Wallace (U196685) on Sunday, 4th December 2011

  The organisation of education changes all the time, as does the definition of what it covers and what you need to do to progress to a higher level - albeit change seems to have been more frenetic in more recent decades.
  
  Don't forget t that "old" universities (like Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, and so on) started on the initiative of local industrialists and their need for deeper understanding of the science and technology of their industries.
  
  Over the decades, more and more areas of work became more professionalised, and with it they needed the same advancement in learning and education as had been developed for older-established professions. Or in other words, the job the polytechnics used to do is still being done under the university label.
  
  As for when polytechnics started awarding degrees:
  
  The University of London started offering its External degrees in 1858, which meant that sufficiently motivated students anywhere could start studying according to the published syllabus and have their exams marked in London. That was the route by which many a small college throughout not only the UK but also elsewhere in the Empire started on the route to independent university status.
  
  Other new universities were started up, from about the same time onwards, "on probation" under some sort of special purpose advisory/supervisory body of academics from established universities until they were thought ready to award their own degrees. The polytechnics had their courses validated and their degrees awarded by the Council for National Academic Awards from 1965 or thereabouts until 1992, when they were given university status.

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 4th December 2011

  Catigern
  
  Picking up from what Patrick has written- you certainly would know that there was a very strong connection between Nonconformity, Science and Technology and industrialization.
  
  The operation of the Clarendon Code, while allowing a form of religious toleration, also excluded Nonconformists from many of the key careers and institutions. But Nonconformity was often associated with a willingness to embrace "new thinking" - and especially science, which they could use to validate their own unconventional beliefs, while not specifically disseminating ideas that might be considered heretical and scandalous.
  
  As the Code had excluded learned Nonconformists from towns and from such educational establishments as did exist, the Eighteenth Century saw the growth of Dissenting Academies which stressed rationalist , scientific and technological education. By law it was sensible to place such academies in discreet isolated places [not exactly the same but the relocation of the Darby Family from Bristol to Coalbrookdale fits in with such a pattern] ..
  
  As you are I believe a Lancastrian you probably know more than I do about whether the sudden urbanisation of that county meant that such academies suddenly found themselves amidst "populous districts" there. But as early as c1806 Thomas Dalton working at the Manchester Institute, funded by local manufacturers, came up with his Atomic Theory, which suggests that that instutution was fulfilling one of the functions of a university- arguably the main one- that of producing cutting edge thought in pursuit of the truth.
  
  A few years before the house of the eminent Dissenting scientist Joseph Priestly in the Black Country was ransacked by a mob because of his attitudes to the positive aspects of the French Revolution.
  
  Perhaps one of those was the creation of a national system of universal popular education in France, for it was during the long struggle of 1793-1815 that the idea of the value of mass and higher education really became established. In c1811 after the Wellesley brothers had achieved victory in India British missionary societies were given permission to go and take Christianity there, on condition that they taught literacy. It was there that Lancaster and Bell both independently produced the Monitorial System- assembly line education- in the schools of the Anglican and the Nonconformist mission schools. And soon after the end of the war, and the consequent scandal about Factory Apprentices in Lancashire, the law placed an educational responsibility on all "masters" of such children. The impact was to bring an end to Factory Apprenticeships, but the National and the British and Foreign Societies then set up schools in the UK using the monitorial system.
  
  As you have said/inferred the repealing of the Test and Corporation Acts and therefore the end of "Nonconformity" brought these people within the mainstream and Beatrice Webb's grandfather Potter was one of the founders of University College, the Potters, Webbs and Chamberlains all being part of successful industrialist dynasties from the Unitarian Congregation.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 4th December 2011

  Further to my last-
  
  D. Stannard said that: "In 1640 alone, 10% of those men in New England with some university training returned to England, and for the next several years the great majority of new graduates from Harvard College eagerly followed them". It was a time when Puritans were predicting the Rule of Saints and the New Millennium was being prepared in England.
  
  It is a reminder that the "British" were educated in many places.. For Nonconformist English Protestant Scotland and its universities were popular, and there were ties with the Protestant Netherlands and Switzerland, while the Titus Oates story highlights the European seminaries that trained Englishmen for the priesthood.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 4th December 2011

  Trinity College Dublin should, I think, be considered an English/British institution, historically speaking. It was monopolised by the Ascendency for several centuries (I know nowt of UCD's history).Β 
  University College Dublin can also be considered an English/British institution as it was co-founded by Englishman John Henry Newman who was also its first Rector.
  

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