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The UK's higher education system has evolved over the years into a single sector which is funded and overseen by higher education funding councils. The government is concerned with ensuring that it receives value for public money and must also ensure that higher education does not expand so rapidly that it cannot be supported. The argument that higher education institutions should seek to attract more private funding is discussed.

The introduction of a loan/tax scheme for students in higher education would offer a number of advantages over the Labour Party's current policy of restoring means-tested maintenance grants. A scheme in which the state paid for students' education itself while students paid for their own maintenance through the use of generous loans repayable through tax and national insurance, would be likely to command broad political support. Students would be able to borrow sufficient money to cover slightly more than their basic needs at an interest rate far lower than the market rate.

With particular, although not exclusive, reference to England, this article explores the appropriateness of describing higher education as a system. It has two main purposes: to explore the grounds for labelling English higher education as a system and to argue that, because this is no longer an appropriate label, a different conceptualisation is required. The central argument is that the structure of higher education is formed through the interaction of the state, market and higher education institutions and is, therefore, a shifting political construct. Furthermore, it will be hypothesised that the English (indeed, the British) model of higher education is better described as an increasingly internally differentiated network of sectors rather than as a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on economic ideologies in higher education in Great Britain. K. McCormick fails to grasp that the analysis of educational ideology is underpinned by the need to understand the political functions of ideology. McCormick has no notion of any underlying dynamic and hence no organizing idea. His so-called framework for the political analysis of higher education comes at the very end of his article and is no more than a list of areas of political activity (political panics, interest groups and the state) which can be extended or contracted at will because they are descriptive categories apparently randomly selected. McCormick's argument is that both the universities and the Ministry of Education adapted to the demands of industry for more technological education and more technologists before the mid-1960s which, he says, is the point that one identify as critical. McCormick's argument is that both the universities and the Ministry of Education adapted to the demands of industry for more technological education and more technologists before the mid-1960s which, he says, is the point that one identify as critical.

This article reviews how the public schools socialised their pupils. It argues that the political education of public schools was apparently effective because those socialising processes were related meaningfully to both the class backgrounds and future expectations of their pupils. The article draws upon this view of political education within the public schools to make wider observations. The conclusion reflects upon the future place and form of political education within the public schools given the fact that their pattern of elite socialisation has changed so dramatically in the past 20 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Formally the new public management model of governance was introduced into British higher education with the passage of the 1988 Education Reform Act, which abolished the existing University Grants Committee (UGC) and instigated the funding councils. This article explores the relationship between the state, the funding councils and the universities with respect to the contemporary development of the English system of higher education. The analysis is based on an exploration of four key policy issues: the quality assurance regime, the research assessment exercises, the widening participation agenda and the introduction of student fees. The goal is to explore how the quasi-state organisations-in particular the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)-have mediated the relationship between the state and the universities. The evidence suggests that the coupling of the state to the universities follows one of three tracks: compliance, resistance and seduction. The article explores what factors determine why one relationship (or combination of relationships) prevails, and explains patterns of change over time. The overall conclusion is that institutional interaction is very complex, and it is inaccurate-as is sometimes claimed-to view the funding council as little more than a compliant channel of government policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]