ABSTRACT
Broadly contemporary with the rise of the civic universities in England there was the parallel creation of a university system in Wales. The concern to create a university movement was thus in part an attempt to redress the imbalance between the Scots and the Irish and themselves. It was an end to the acceptance not only of exclusion from English universities because of the tests against Dissenters, but of dependence on the Scottish universities which were otherwise their main source of higher education. The Welsh university colleges are thus of interest to us here as a pathological example of the dangers of disengagement between the universities and industry. Industrial motives played virtually no part in the early proposals for university education in Wales in the 1850s. The support of the working quarrymen and other humble people is a feature that markedly distinguishes the Welsh universities movement from that in England.
