robbins report

The Robbins Report was not produced (paras 1-2) out of a political vacuum. The Government had been alerted to the future funding dilemmas posed by the likely increase in the demand for student places in higher education by the Treasury through the University Grants Committee (UGC) and appointed Lord Robbins…

The Robbins Review report was published 60 years ago this October. The review made a series of recommendations which have provided a reference point for comment on UK Government higher education policy ever since. This article looks back at the report and considers what the lessons might be for politicians,…

The proposals of the Robbins Report on Higher Education considered the role of providers of tertiary education. It concluded that to ‘confer degree-giving powers on all the existing’ Further Education Colleges ‘would be inappropriate because of the number involved, the variation in their sizes and the diversity of standards’. It…

Government intervention in British universities really took off after the 1963 Robbins Report. Some expansion had already begun – my alma mater, the University of Sussex (BSc 1983, MSc 1987), was set up in 1961, one of seven new “plate-glass” universities established prior to Robbins. But there were 25 other…

Lots of things are claimed for the Robbins Report that don’t hold up to scrutiny.  It was responsible for the ‘plateglass’ universities of the 1960s. Nope – all of the famous ‘English 7’ plateglass universities were lined up before the Report was issued, and one (Sussex) was already open for business.…

Perhaps it was because Lionel Robbins was a pillar of the establishment (LSE professor, Life Peer, Chairman of the Financial Times, Director of the Royal Opera House), that the 1963 Robbins Report on higher education landed like a bombshell. Its fundamental position (subsequently known as the ‘Robbins Principle’) was set…