FOREWORD: THE PARTIAL SHIFT FROM PUBLIC TO PRIVATE GOODS IN UK HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

This fine collection of papers, which has been variously sourced from Greenwich, Hull, King’s College London, Leeds Beckett, Oxford, Sheffield, and the UCL Institute of Education, embodies the well-distributed strengths of UK scholarship on higher education. One of the longstanding strengths of what we might call the British school is historical method, where the work of the scholar is often in sharp contrast to those policy documents, apparently emanating from the end-of-history engine room, in which short-term political objectives are everything and there is nothing to be learned from the past.