Introduction

This chapter is an analysis of the creation and development of the local authority sector of higher education from the early 1960s to the 1980s. It is essentially a survey of educational policy-making and decision-making in England at the national level. The chapter attempts to identify those really responsible for creating the local authority sector of higher education and reconsiders how and why it was done. It also attempts to place the problems facing contemporary local authority higher education into their recent historical perspective. In the 1920s Leeds and Sheffield universities were still receiving over one-quarter of their recurrent income from local authority grants, and, excluding Oxford and Cambridge, at a national level the local authorities' contributions consistently amounted to over 10 per cent of recurrent costs. The Education Act of 1902 gave the local authorities further duties in the field of post-elementary education.