The Robbins Trap: British Attitudes and the Limits of Expansion*

The Robbins Report (1963) helped to justify and chart the great expansion of British higher education in the decade and a half following up its publication. But this liberal and expansionist document has also served to limit the growth of British higher education by affirming the values and assumptions that define the English ‘idea of a university’. Among these values are:

• (i) the monopoly by state supported institutions of study leading to degrees;
• (ii) their commitment to high and common academic standards for the honours degree;
• (iii) a degree earned through full-time study over three years; and
• (iv) the costs of student maintenance and instruction being borne wholly (or nearly so) by the state.

These values and commitments, accepted by Robbins and the academic community as a whole, are incompatible with the provision of mass higher education to much more than the 15 per cent of the age grade currently enrolled in British higher education.