ABSTRACT
There appears to be general agreement that in Britain, as in many other countries, it was in the 1980s that the national government became far more involved in determining the direction, shape and health of the higher education system than hitherto. A series of key policy pronouncements can be identified, starting with the 1985 Green Paper The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s (Department for Education and Science, 1985).1 The others were:
• The White Paper Higher Education: Meeting the Challenge (Department for Education and Science, 1987);
• Kenneth Baker’s Lancaster Speech (Department for Education and Science, 1989);
• The White Paper Higher Education: A New Framework (Department for Education and Science, 1991);
• The introduction of Maximum Aggregate Student Number limits, the Dearing Committee and top-up fees (1993-8); and
• The White Paper The Future of Higher Education (Department for Education and Skills, 2003).
