ABSTRACT
The 1945 Percy Report considered the need for and provision of higher technological education in England and Wales. Its recommendations included the expansion of science teaching in universities and the creation of colleges of advanced technology. It also recommended that organizations should be established to co-ordinate the work of the various institutions involved in higher technological education at local and national levels. There was, simultaneously, a concern for the expansion of education as a recreation. The 1944 Education Act set up adult education centres offering a wide range of provision. The number of adult students in evening institutes rose from three hundred thousand in 1947 to more than a million in 1967, many studying on non-vocational courses. By that time the university system was undergoing rapid change. The newer civic universities, such as Newcastle and Leicester, were founded after the Second World War, often through the ‘promotion’ of an existing college.
