ABSTRACT
There was never really any doubt in the early 1980s that the pattern of Higher Education in the UK would have to change. The values which had underpinned the expansion of the university sector in the post-war era included a firm faith in degree-level education as among the social goods that merited public support, and a strong belief in the capacity of academics to deploy government funding wisely and to run their own affairs with wisdom, prudence and foresight. Such values came to sound hollow in the context of a Conservative Government which was facing deepening economic recession, was keen to limit the activities and spending of the State, and was committed to the power of market solutions. In one arena after another-in the health and welfare professions, in local government and the civil service, as well as in education at all levels-new style managerialism was brought into confrontation with old style professional values (see, e.g., Pollitt, 1990; Davies, 1995: ch8). And the transformations that were put in train, calling for unambiguous mission statements and clear performance indicators, and introducing the incentive of market competition, were far-reaching.
