ABSTRACT
In Britain, the higher education system, like the canine in the detective story, has remained strangely silent and inert. Yet the official statistics provided by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service show that, in 1996, just under 40 percent of applicants to higher education opted for vocationally or professionally oriented courses. J. Gear et al. recommend universities, amongst other things, “to make available their expertise for formal professional education and informal professional learning alike, through courses, consultancies, data bases and personal contacts. The main current disincentive is likely to stem from the academics’ own professional demands and pressures: a need both to excel competitively to earn research funding and at the same time to meet exacting requirements for quality in teaching. It is only insofar as continuing professional development can, firstly, be seen as a worthwhile exercise and, secondly, be fitted somehow into this tight existing framework, that substantial progress may be made.
