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OCR for page 69
RESEARCH AND BRITISH UNIVERSITIES
Sheldon Rothblatt
University of California
As in the United States, universities and colleges in Great Britain developed historically
as teaching institutions. That generalization equally applies to universities in England,
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as well as the universities of the Empire and Commonwealth,
influenced by home models. Universities and colleges existed to educate a clerical and
governing elite. Later they were places for professional training. Some degree of specialism
is required in the second instance, but not necessarily research or the forms of original inquiry
associated with the word "research."
Until late in the 19th century, British universities provided little encouragement for
research, irrespective of specialism. This does not mean that discoveries could not be made,
only that an incentive system barely existed. Academic careers were made in teaching and
administration. In Scotland, which did not have a collegiate tutorial structure like Oxford
and Cambridge the orofessoriate was hampered in research because their Red were ~n
_ ~ _ ~ ~ · ~ ~ _ t) _ ~ ~ ~ ~- _ ~ v
. . . . ~ ~. . . .
young, only or nigh school age. the higher learning meant little to them. For centuries,
therefore, ambitious scholars and scientists sought careers outside universities, being supported
by patrons or learned societies, popular lectures or private wealth, and, in the first half of the
1 9th century, by a limited amount of government assistance, usually for projects of a technical
or practical character: the design of ships' huIls, agricultural improvement, geodetic surveys,
armaments, lighthouse construction, food processing, weights and measurement, mining and
manufacturing. Hospitals and medical schools supported an interesting amount of research.
This pattern is very similar to what obtained in the United States at the same time. And both
nations had "liberal" governments, that is, the prevailing political phiIosophy favored private
initiative over State support and possible bureaucratic interference. In other words,: sup-port
for research, including origir~aI research, existed outside the universities, but it was ad hoc arid
unpredictabIe and geared to practical FesuIts not discovery.
Despite the heavy orientation towards teaching that prevailed in the universities and
colleges of both EngIish-speaking c-ountr~es, researchers would have preferred- and did in fact
prefer to be in universities rather than in other Institutions for a number of important reasons
Universities, especially those of Britain, were note-d for- their history of seI-f-government,
periodically intruded- upon by royal and eceIesiastica1 authorities. Endowmer~ts, especially at
else oldest foundations of Oxford and Cambridge, were plentiful and normally adequate for
the levels- of scholarship anti science then prevai-ling. The libraries were splendid and rich ill
classical- and theoIog~caI mate-rial~ In other words there existed, or existed potentiaIIy, an
environment of relative freedom, leisure and flrexib-il~ty conducive to the work of ind:ependent
Investigators and populated with a certain critical mass of educate-d and like mir~ded persons.
The trick was to adapt the ;st:ructurą of British universities- to research and: unite research
with teaching New univer;~t~es' for example LoncIon or the Victorian `~edbr~ck'' universities
and university colleges of the provinces, couId be adapted- to research fro-m the outset,
although this did Oot occur with the ease Which- this suggests tYew universities "are Nerved
with legitimacy and status, and the-se On hamper innovation an-d experiments Nevertheless,
69
OCR for page 70
Sheldon Rothblatt
the senior universities were harder to influence, especially since the famous reforms of the
period 1850 1880 actually strengthened their teaching structure. But gradually the research
mission found a place alongside teaching, the result of a combination of public pressure and
a movement for change from within. German research models were certainly influential.
Equally important, however, was the salient change in secondary education which sent better
educated students to the ancient universities, permitting young scholars and scientists smitten
with German notions of higher education to teach at a more advanced level and to excite
young minds with the new learning. the knowledge revolution of the later 19th century as
Be,, `, .'
it is sometimes called.. Yet we must not exaggerate the extent to which research challenged
teaching. The two were not generally considered incompatible one hundred years ago, and
today the British universities are still noted for the excellence of their teaching, which partly
explains why devoted researchers contend for professorial chairs, which provide more time or
at least greater scope for creative activity.
The Muse of History works in devious ways.
. , ~_% · . . ~. . .
One particular feature of the teaching
structure of British universities proved to be of special value in opening the door to research.
The development of the single-subject honors degree, which in modified form travelled north
from England to Scotland in the course of the 18th century, eventually became the dominant
mode of instruction and examining in the redbrick universities and in most of the post Second
World War foundations. The undergraduate degree in Britain, following a European pattern
generally, simply became far more specialized than the American baccalaureate. The
specialized degree allowed teachers the opportunity to become.more.specialized themselves.
In America, a radically different path was followed. The undergraduate degree remained
unspecialized, and. even with the introduction of majors Continued to remain relatively
unspecialized. Furthermore, the comparatively poor quality of American secondary education,
especially.American mass secondary education, sent students to the universities who were not
as. well-prepared as their British counterparts. Thus was fastened.onto American higher
education a concern for remedial education that has continued to be a difficulty. In the
United States school and university overlap. in function, indeed, the words overlap
semantically. The way out for a new generation of American scholars and scientists coming
of age was the creation of the Graduate School. In Britain the.Graduate School is a relatively
late phenomenon, and the pursuit of higher degrees really only became common within the last
forty years. A first-class. bachelor s degree (the equivalent in Scotland is a master s) was long
considered sufficient qualification for a career in high-level teaching and advanced work.
. . .
Today all of British-h.igher education-the universities., the polytechnics and the technical
colleges-are essentially public. institutions, receiving assistance from the State .or local
authorities. There is a nominal private sector, the. University of Buckingham, tan
undergraduate university college.founded tin our own day. Buckingham is too poor to support
research? especially research in the Sciences. Oxford. and Cambridge received no State
assistance until a small grant was given to the Cambridge medical school just before the First
World War. The civic universities were supported largely by fees, municipal contributions, and
in a- few cases, handsome endowments, but they were ~undercap~~talized from the start. London
was similarly supported. The Scottish universities have been in receipt of some government
assistance for centuries.because of special historical arrangements dating back to a time before
1700 when.:Scotland was independent. Direct State assistance to higher education has.grown
since the First World War, but especially since the end of the Second World War. State
~0
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Great Britain
assistance has accompanied the transformation of Britain from a Liberal to a Social
Democratic or Welfare State.
Pressures for State involvement have come from two sources. First is the academic
community itself, including the Oxford and Cambridge academic community, which
discovered that the customary resources available for the support of scholarship and science
were inadequate for Big Science. It was no longer possible to do science with bailing wire and
prisms. We now know, thanks to the inquiries of the University of East Anglia historian,
Michael Sanderson, that prior to World War One there were scientists in the University of
London who undertook secret research for the steel industry, and the professors in the civic
universities had long sought the support of industrialists and industries in their regions. But
British industry in general ceased to maintain close ties with the universities, preferring in-
house research, and the academic community turned increasingly to the State, where, for
historic reasons, their connections were strong. The second source of pressure for State
involvement is war. Both world wars demonstrated the relationship between science and
applied science and brought the universities and the State into partnership.
Until this year, that partnership was symbolized by a committee of the Treasury called
the University Grants Committee (UGC), founded in 1919. The UGC was transferred to
another ministry, the Department of Education and Science (DES), but is now being replaced
altogether, by a wholly new body called the Universities Funding Council, whose composition
is more broadly-based than that of the UGC. The UGC was essentially composed of members
of the academic community who dispensed a block government grant to the universities with
almost no questions asked. The grant was distributed in support of teaching and for other
operating expenses and was received from the government on a quinquennial basis, allowing
plenty of lead time for planning. It is not generally known-that is to say not easily
discoverable how much of the block grant has in the past gone for support of research since
the published figures are not disaggregated. Until a few years ago the reign of the UGC
could certainly be regarded as the Golden Age of University-State relations. The guild
conception of academic life prevailed. University autonomy was respected, and the
universities customarily received whatever they requested. In a special way, the alliance or
partnership between the State and the universities dates back to the 19th century. The don
and the civil servant were both drawn from the same social stratum in society and received
a similar education. They moved in common social and intellectual circles, and their children
intermarried. This coziness has come crashing to an end.
The UGC is one half of the basic government support system for university-based research.
The other half is the system of government-funded research councils. These receive their
income from the Department of Education and Science, which also gives grants directly to
universities, but it is certainly possible for income to be derived from other ministries as
well, such as the Department of Agriculture or Environment or Energy or Trade and Industry.
Two research councils, concerned with medicine and agriculture, were established before the
Second World War and represent traditional areas of State concern. Three others, the Science
and Engineering Research Council, the Natural Environment and Research Council, and the
Economic and Social Research Council were formed under the Labor Governments of the mid-
1960s. (There are earlier precedents.) Universities also receive research grants from private
foundations, but this sector is not nearly as strong as in the United States. Money can flow
into the hands of academic researchers from nationalized industries in the form of
71
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Sheldon Rothblatt
commissioned research, although this opportunity is being lost by the privatization policy
being applied by the current Government. (Of course new opportunities may arise on the same
basis.)
The system of governmental support for research carried out in universities has from the
outset been characterized by decentralization, a similarity with the United States. The
numerous departments, committees, boards, advisory bodies and councils through which money
passes have made the path of such funds often difficult to trace or disentangle from other
budget items. A decentralized system also raises questions of project coordination and often
produces charges of duplication of effort. But decentralization also means flexibility and
provides alternatives, for when sources of support are choked off at one level, they may
continue to flow at another. A decentralized system also allows for a certain balance, if not
exact balance, between research and development in the R&D budget. As in the United States,
the British universities are the primary source of what for want of a better name is called
"basic research" or "pure research," and a decentralized research support system very likely
allows for greater scope by the researcher or research team in defining a problem and its
methods than a more dirigiste agency.
r,
But that is seeing the issue from the standpoint of the researcher and from the perspective
of the academician, who, in ideal fashion, view discovery as an addition to knowledge with
possible but not predictable practical application. The research support system that grew up
in Britain in the first half of the 20th century has certainly favored the researcher and the
classic research ethic. However, signs of a re-evaluation of research policy were already
apparent in the last Labour Government, and it has to be concluded that at the moment at least
central changes are occurring and have occurred in the government support package.
Until recently there has not really been a coordinated or central "research policy" in the
United Kingdom. The shared assumption was that basic research could more or less be left
to universities, and it was the responsibility of the UGC and the research councils to continue
support for established research projects and decide on funding for new ones. It was generally
assumed that funding agencies would more or less limit their interference to marginal matters.
The questions of priority research or targeted research and the ideal balance of "R" to "D"
were not really discussed, although Lord Rothschild, in a famous report issued in 1971,
reflected on these matters. But in the late 1970s the formulation of science policy in relation
to government income and expenditure began to generate serious reconsideration, and the
broader question of Britain's economic competitiveness entered the picture. The DES science
budget had in fact been declining since the late 1960s, falling from a high of 13 percent per
annum in 1966 to about 4 percent in 1972-1973. Since then through 1988 the DES science
budget has been held roughly level. However, DES support through the UGC has fallen, as has
commissioned research by the various government ministries, excepting Defense. The UGC
began "rating" academic departments on their research output in order to find a utilitarian
measure to account for the expenditure of pounds sterling.
At every level of support, spending plans are now undergoing much closer levels of
scrutiny, and the watchword is much greater selectivity in funding projects. Apparently even
the best scientists are being given less freedom to manocuvre. Symptomatic of new trends
towards centralization is publication of the Annual Review of Government Funded R&D.
This valuable document first appeared in 1983, a Product of the Cabinet Office itself.2 We
72
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Great Britain
may also be witnessing the emergence of a professional class of university administrators on
the American model, wherein decision-making is shifting from academic senates and courts
to vice-chancellors and registrars. The current slogan is that research should have practical
application and generate more wealth, that it should be "applied" or '~strategict' (long term
goals with short-term flexibility) and subject to central bureaucratic attention.
We will shortly have a better estimate of how current thinking about a "science policy" is
actually being carried out. There are several early returns, however. Universities are forming
consortia with other universities, with polytechnics and with industry in competing for
government money. In some instances universities may be benefitting, as in the transfer of
work from in-house ministerial or research council institutes to university departments,
especially in agriculture and environmental science. Greater central control is represented by
short-term contracts, single grants in a given area of investigation and the search for
measurements of effectiveness in addition to the classic peer review process, e.g. output
measurements.
Unlike the UGC (that is, the UGC before the l980s when the hardening economic situation
turned it into an antagonist as much as a supporter of universities), the new Universities
Funding Council will contain representatives of industry, as do the boards of the research
councils and other major science advisory units. So the dons no longer have an exclusive or
even an upper hand in determining how research money is to be spent. Furthermore, the
market orientation or at least the talk of using the market to discipline universities has led the
Conservative Party Thatcher Government to adopt a new policy regarding the funding of
universities. Instead of providing them with long-term support, covering all or nearly all of
their varied activities, the present Government will provide universities with only a portion
of their budgetary requirements, asking them to seek outside support to round out their
income. The research councils themselves have been seeking outside support.
Ten years ago no one could have foreseen the revolution in attitude towards universities
and the changes in the support system that are nearly in place as 1990 rolls around. The
primary impetus for change was the charge that Britain was not meeting its foreign
_
competition, that its corporate leadership was elegant but not professional and that its labor
supply was restricted by strikes, radical shop stewards and outmoded trade union practices.
Economic difficulties provided an opportunity for some serious questioning of the role of
universities in promoting the national welfare at all levels, and revived charges going back
to the past century that the universities ignored applied science and technology. These charges
may not be altogether correct. It is important to look at the other end of the equation and also
ask whether industry is interested in or able to absorb and develop as well as support the
findings of university research. The evidence seems to say that British industry between the
wars also became dependent upon state sources of capital for innovation, and many sectors of
the economy lost their initiative and incentives. Universities do not customarily engage in
product development. Indeed, in the public university sector in the U.S. such activity is
regarded as falling within the area of conflict of interest. But the best statement of this
matter that I have run across was made by a distinguished engineer about a decade ago who,
after pointing out that labor mobility, management skills, interest rates, taxing policies and
so on are critical factors in changing lab science into products, wrote that "the Technological
plateau' of a wide range of unspectacular but exacting technologies which permeate important
73
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Sheldon Rothblatt
industries is as least as important as the few 'dazzling peaks' which arise in a few small
sectors."3 The historian Michael Sanderson, who has done the most to inquire into the working
relations between universities and industry in Britain since the turn of the century, has in fact
found much to praise on both sides.4
Nevertheless, Britain's declining competitiveness in the 1970s, as measured by a great
many economic indicators, demanded a fresh look, and both major political parties talked
about improving industry's use of scientific information. The Thatcher Government applied
the whip. To use a broken image, the whip is to some degree ideological. The present
government believes that market forces a l'Americaine should play a larger role in the
generation of wealth. But the Thatcher Government has not yet relinquished full control of
the university sector as market discipline requires, claiming that guidance is necessary while
the transition to a more competitive educational system is taking place. To effect that
competition, the Government has abolished tenure, suggesting that an anxious academic is a
more efficient academic, and it has subjected the university sector to a severe diet of budget
cuts, forcing early retirements. The American universities have been among the beneficiaries,
since a brain drain of unknown dimensions is currently taking place.
There is no doubt that historically the quality of British research has been high. The
excellence of British science and scholarship is attributable to the excellence of their
educational system, which has been elitist but also meritocratic. Staffing ratios have been
twice as good as those obtaining in our own public sector. Entrance to universities has been
highly competitive, and the winners in the race for life chances have been well supported in
their education, not knowing the struggle that has led so many American students to part-
time work. Remedial education has been nearly nonexistent, the drop-out rate from
universities is negligible, the completion rate exemplary. Consequently, the intellectual and
academic payoff is very high. These conditions have favored quality research, although there
has in the past been some criticism that the single-subject honors degree made intellectual
innovation more difficult since the curriculum was dominated by set books and papers. Such
criticism, however, is very difficult to prove, although it makes for good political copy.
The Thatcher Government, while engaging in its slenderizing policy, has argued that the
universities were filled with unproductive faculty, and it was from this criticism that the
UGC derived its interest in measuring output. But again, there is no real evidence that the
charge is warranted. Whether the changes that have been introduced in the 1980s will
promote a lean but excellent system and a more productive economy is not a prediction that
can be made, yet an offshore observer might reflect that quality is hard to obtain under any
circumstances, but that excellence is easily compromised. A careful government might wish
to avoid de-stabilizing a system with a proven track record in original research.
Given the polemical environment in today's Britain, it is often forgotten that we are
actually witnessing the second assault on the British educational system, for the first one
came from a Labour Government which abolished nearly all of the historic and very fine local
grammar schools in the 1 970s, replacing them with "comprehensive" high schools on an
American model. The inspiration behind this change was social, not academic, for the
grammars had earned an excellent reputation as feeder schools for universities; but because
access to them was governed by competitive entry, they were accused of being needlessly
exclusive. The results of that change appear to be mixed, insofar as improving the life chances
74
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Great Britain
of working-class children is concerned. As for the wealthier families, they have resorted to
the independent educational sector, within which are the vastly prestigious so-called 'ipublic,'
privately endowed boarding schools.
Social justice and academic excellence do not always work in tandem. Access to
universities has improved, largely because of the recommendations of the Robbins Committee
of the 1960s that many new universities be created. But from all accounts, entry of working-
class children into the universities is still disappointing. And there is no system of
transferring from a less competitive sector of higher education to a more prestigious one for
late bloomers, nor are there signs that this particularly important feature of American higher
education is likely to be widely adopted, although experiments with American-style curricular
modules and credit-units are going on, mainly if not exclusively in the polytechnics.
Achieving a balance of objectives is very difficult for any society, as we have painfully
learned. In the United States, we possess an educational system in which many of our citizens
are either poorly educated or not educated at all, and many of our universities are filled with
young people whose standards of achievement do not match up with those of their
counterparts abroad. We rely on certain portions of our private sector of education to keep
the standards up, but they, of course, are not in the business of mass education. Nor are they
the only source of our future research talent. We are at the moment experiencing a shortage
of high quality students in our graduate science programs and are relying heavily on foreign-
born candidates in certain important fields. So we too are going to have to make important
choices.
Mention should finally be made of one of the greatest uncertainties of all with respect to
the British science and research effort, namely, the coming of a United States of Europe in
1992. At this time no one knows what kind of federal government will emerge in Brussels and
how the new arrangements for governing will affect national sovereignty. All of the factors
that go into determining a nation's science policy taxing and funding strategies, support for
industry, support for high technology, the excellence of research training, the quality of lower
forms of education, the general structure of incentives and rewards for competitive
achievement-may have to be reconsidered from scratch if a One Europe~dream becomes a
reality.
NOTES
1. Michael Sanderson, "The University of London and Industrial Progress, 1880-1914," Journal of Contemporary History,
Vol. 7 (July-October 1972), pp. 243-262.
2. British Cabinet Office, Annual Review of Government Funded R&D 1983 and 1984. Her Majesty's Stationery
Office, 1984.
3. Sir Ieuan Maddock, "Science, Technology and Industry," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 345,
No. 30 (September 1975), p. 325.
4. Michael Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850-1970, London, (1972), p. 387.
75
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Sheldon Rothblatt
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Advisory Board for Research Councils. "Science and Public Expenditure." Department of Education and Science, 1987.
Alter, P. The Reluctant Patron, Science and the State in Britain, 185~1920. Oxford, Hamburg, New York: Berg, 1987.
British Cabinet Office. Annual Review of Government Funded R&D 1983 and 1984. Her Majesty's Stationery Office,
1984.
Council for Scientific Policy. Inquiry into the Flow of Candidates in Science and Technology into Higher Educator Cmnd
3541 (February 1968).
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Report of the Research Council. 1964.
Government Response to House of Lords Report (1982~. Vol. 52 of the Parliamentary Papers for 1981-1982.
Ince, M. The Politics of British Science. Brighton: Wheat Sheaf, 1986.
Maddock, I. "Science, Technology and Industry," The Seventh Roya} Society Technology Lecture. Proceedings of the
Royal Society of London, Vol. 345 (1975), pp. 295-326.
Rothblatt, S. "The Notion of an Open Scientific Community in Historical Perspective." Science as a Commodity, Threats
to the Open Community of Scholars. Edited by Michael Gibbons and Bjorn Wittrock. London: Longman, 1985, pp.
21-76.
Sanderson, M. The Universities and British Industry, 185~1970. London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Sanderson, M. "The University of London and Industrial Progress, 1880-1914." Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.
7 (July-October 1972), pp. 243-262.
Sanderson, M. "Research and the Firm in British Industry, 1919-1939." Science Studies, Vol. 2 (1972), pp. 107-151.
76
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FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
british industry
