ABSTRACT

On a previous occasion, when colleagues came together to discuss the world in the year 2000, it was forecast that entire cities would develop whose principal business was knowledge and higher education. At that time, Boston was the model in view. It was assumed that students would be increasingly mobile, spending periods in different universities and in several university cities. Such mobility, it was argued, would inevitably be international, since by 2000 ‘London will be an hour’s distance from New York’ (Bell and Graubard, 1967:189). Thirty years on we can smile a little ruefully at this. New ‘knowledge cities’ have not developed in the manner envisaged, although one day they might. A mainly postgraduate elite remains mobile between the great international universities as they always have been, while a lesser group in America and Europe manage some modest regional mobility. Generally, though, students are captured on entry and continue to remain at one university for better or worse.