ABSTRACT
The index of Berdahl’s landmark text British Universities and the State, published in 1959, contains no references to the Board of Education and precious few to its 1944 successor, the Ministry of Education. While Carswell, in his sparkling insider’s view of Government and Universities in Britain (1985), is prepared to devote a chapter to the Treasury, neither the Ministry of Education nor the Department of Education and Science (which succeeded the Ministry in 1964) warrant such prominence. For both Berdahl and Carswell their analysis of the relationship between the state and the universities is directed primarily at the changing role of the UGC, its links to a tolerant Treasury and its response to political – especially parliamentary – pressures.
