ABSTRACT
Compared with engineering, business studies is a relative newcomer to higher education in Britain, and its development has been accorded less public and political attention. Within the overall expansion of higher education in the last twenty years, undergraduate business education has been a significant growth area. It has been so in both public and university sectors although the growth has been on a different scale and taken a different form in each. The universities have introduced courses in banking, accountancy, industrial economics, and business studies. In the public sector, the four-year sandwich degree in business studies has predominated. By 1980 there were forty-one such degrees with a total enrolment of nearly 8,000 students. Today, about 5 per cent of all CNAA courses are in business studies, accounting for about 7.5 per cent of all CNAA students. In addition, there are courses in accountancy, secretarial studies, business economics, and specialist degrees such as retail marketing. However, it is the four-year sandwich degree in business studies which is the focus of this chapter. Every polytechnic has one and there are several in colleges and institutes of higher education. They attract large numbers of applicants and, as we shall see, their graduates appear to be much in demand in the labour market. On all kinds of criteria they have been a success story in the growth of public-sector higher education. But a success of what sort? It is this question which we shall seek to explore in this and in the following chapter.
