ABSTRACT
The social, political and economic salience of higher education increased across the world during the 1980s and 1990s. Governments have come to see the expansion of higher education as the key to improved economic performance. Higher education has other features which makes any discussion of it in the context of the politics of public management particularly interesting. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristic of British higher education has been its long resistance to changes that were more than evolutionary. In the 1960s the growth of higher education was achieved largely through the creation of a second and unequivocally public sector of higher education. By 1987 higher education policy became more complex and difficult policy tensions emerged. The economic turbulence of the early 1980s, high unemployment, the steep decline of manufacturing industries and the restructuring of the economy towards service industries affected demand for higher education and perceptions of its economic contribution.
