ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a few steps backward in British history to establish the social, economic, and political context into which the 'seven brave young Britains' are so boldly stepping. In the later 1950s the University Grants Committee, a non-partisan agency of Parliament, including eminent academicians, authorized the creation of seven new universities in England. The curricular schemes of the seven represent innovations that will bear close watching by American colleges and universities. All of the new universities will organize their curricula, the author believes into schools of related subjects. This approach lies somewhere between the American method of general education plus specialization in a single subject or discipline and the old British system of deep and narrow concentration in a single subject straight through the three years of the university. It assumes that general education in the broad sense has been accomplished by the end of the sixth form.
