Blueprint or Blue Remembered Hills? The Relevance of the Robbins Report to the present Reforms of Higher Education

Abstract

Abstract Two interpretations of the Robbins report are still current a quarter of a century after it was published. The first is that it was the finest expression of a liberal vision of higher education, the world we lost; the second that it provided the blueprint for Britain's modern system of higher education. In this article it is argued that the second interpretation is to be preferred. The shape of higher education is still that designed by the Robbins committee 25 years ago. The binary policy was an attempt to modify, not to repudiate, the Committee's scheme, which in any case has been authoritatively endorsed by the recent White Paper.