ABSTRACT
The National Extension College (NEC) was founded by Michael Young and Brian Jackson in 1963. Perhaps its major asset at birth was its grand sounding name, but in reality it was modest in the extreme. NEC was one room, nine feet square, in the back of 57 Russell Street, Cambridge — a condemned artisan’s cottage housing the headquarters of the Advisory Centre for Education (ACE). ACE had been founded by Michael Young one year earlier as an advice and information centre for parents. ACE was not a provider of education, nor had it plans to become so, but nevertheless it spawned NEC which was to become much larger than its own parent body.
