Universities, the Polity and the Market Place

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Abstract
This ‘note of dissent’ rejects the fashionable view that a prime aim of the university is to promote national economic ends. Instead, it reaffirms its traditional role as an instrument of culture, and its general ‘civilising’ purposes. Thus the effects of a university education should differ markedly from those that characterise other institutions of higher education. Covert political moves to institute a unitary. system of higher education, to replace the present binary one, should therefore be resisted. Claims that universities do not cater sufficiently for science and technology, both in teaching and research, are misguided. In economic terms, is there a real demand (expressed in higher salaries) for more scientists? Forecasters freely admit their inability to predict numbers with any certainty. Employers are ambiguous: they want to recruit both highly specialised and ‘flexible’ graduates. University autonomy is at present threatened by the State, although past interventions, like those also of industry and commerce, have not been conspicuously successful, or necessarily promoted national wellbeing. In particular, the political demand to determine the university's research agenda is derisory. In any case, the university record in research, both in the pure and applied fields, is outstanding. The proper relation between the university and government is an ‘arm's length’ one. The State—here, the government in office at any one time—is not competent to judge what universities can—or should—’deliver’.

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