ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the sources of demand for increasing amounts and varieties of education and the new colleges’ awareness of and reaction to these demands. The necessary precondition of a potential supply of educators and subject matter to meet new demands was well fulfilled in Victorian England. The best certification of a liberal education, regardless of the reasons for which it was desired, was a university degree, and the colleges’ steady attention to this reveals its importance. An account of the various professions which made demands upon Victorian higher education may well begin with medicine, in many ways the archetype of 19th Century professional development. The growth of the traditional professions of medicine, law, the Church, and the military, and the regular addition of new professional and semi-professional occupations produced a steadily rising and diversifying demand for higher education. The demand for university-trained engineers appears to have been as limited as the interest in engineering education generally.
