Did more mean worse?

Michael Brock

  • Government and the Universities in Britain: Programme and Performance 1960-1980 by John Carswell
    Cambridge, 181 pp, £19.50, January 1986, ISBN 0 521 25826 X

John Carswell is uniquely qualified to provide an official’s chronicle of British higher education in the Robbins and post-Robbins phases. He was assigned to the universities desk in the Treasury in 1960 when the Robbins Committee was being appointed. He left the secretaryship of the University Grants Committee for that of the British Academy in 1977. As his historical work on the 18th century has shown, he writes well. His Thoughts on the Present Discontents may not quite match Burke’s: but they are cleverly marshalled. His many insights are highly informative. His few in comprehensions could hardly be more revealing.

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