ABSTRACT
Throughout our discussion it has been apparent that the concept of the ‘vocational’ is in a number of ways defensible as a legitimate and even central process of higher education, and that the concept of a ‘liberal’ education therefore requires reappraisal. One of our interviewees talked of the need for a ‘hybrid phrase’ to describe what has emerged in the public sector since the 1960s. Such a concept would straddle the older tradition of liberal values and the younger tradition of more explicitly employment-oriented courses, across a much wider range of employments, than would have been acceptable to spokesmen for the ‘liberal tradition’ in the nineteenth century. The concept would need to indicate the extent to which, in the conditions of the late twentieth century, these traditions as embodied in the profiles of sectors and institutions have been made to combine or to overlap. Our discussion suggests the need to recognize the importance of bringing the discussion of higher education away from extreme positions in defending liberal and vocational traditions, and towards a conception that, with many of the reservations and conditions we have discussed, comes into an academically, professionally and socially defensible central position.
