ABSTRACT
Planning is seldom the detached and rational process we might expect. When Rabindranath Tagore and Leonard Elmhirst were planning Santiniketan, ‘with terms of reference that would flummox any Education Authority, the poet and the agriculturist sat down together to draw up a scheme for the new school’ (Young, 1982:83). Much more recently, as Britain was planning its Open University, one member of the planning group suggested they should consider the level at which the University should operate and whether undergraduate degrees were the top priority. Jennie Lee, the minister responsible, immediately responded that anyone with an open mind on that issue should not be on the committee. It was to be a university and nothing less.
