ABSTRACT
Future historians might possibly view the development of higher education during the period 1950 to 1970 as having been dominated by three major preoccupations: quantitative expansion, reform of individual institutions and/or specific aspects of higher education and reform of the higher education system as a whole. To some extent, these three preoccupations can be said to have appeared consecutively during this period. The fifties and early sixties were marked mainly by the ‘explosion of numbers’; the early sixties represented essentially a period when new institutions were created and when sometimes radical partial reforms took place (in teaching content and methods, in organization and governance in various institutions, etc.); in the late sixties some decisive steps were taken towards a global planning approach to the system of higher education.
