ABSTRACT
As with so many areas of national life, the First World War had a profound effect on higher education. Its immediate impact on the universities was catastrophic, as young men flocked to join up and much normal activity was suspended. More urgent priorities supplanted the Edwardian initiatives to reorder relationships between the universities and the state. As the conflict ground on, however, the increasing reliance of the war effort on scientific and technical expertise steadily highlighted the significance of higher learning. Claims about the importance of education and research were not just rhetoric, but absolute necessity – and not only in the short term, but for long-term national survival as well. Thus, the nation had to recognise that higher education was essential to modern life, requiring support from public funds. By the same token, universities had to acknowledge that they had responsibilities to the nation, and that if they were to enjoy enlarged state benefits they had to accept a level of state direction. From the middle of the war, then, the government began to revisit the role of the universities and research. Wartime experience bore out the arguments articulated before the war about the significance of the universities, but there were no thoughts of simply taking up pre-war moves. The context was quite different, and a new relationship between higher education and the state was put in place.
