Task 4. Text. Diversity and system.

     The demand for higher education is universal, but no two countries have identical higher education systems. The pattern is determined in each case both by educational and non-educational factors. The former include the structures of the schooling and examining system and of what is now usually referred to as post-compulsory education. The latter include attitudes, private and public, towards individual freedom and mobility, and towards administrative centralization and devolution. Finance, too, can never be left out of the picture.

     Some national structures and attitudes are inherited, and in the case of the United Kingdom they are often part of centuries-old legacies. Higher education has a long and distinctive history, or rather histories, for the history of higher education in Scotland, in particular, has been very different from that in England. There have been many changes in recent years, however, both in higher education itself and in the factors influencing the form and range of its provision. Some of these changes will be familiar outside the United Kingdom - wider social access for both sexes; growth in total numbers; emergence of new institutions; curriculum development.

     Indeed it is only during the course of the last twenty years that it has become possible to write of a “system” of higher education in the United Kingdom. The last great official Committee of Enquiry into British higher education, the Robbins Committee, reported in 1963 that “even today it would be a misnomer to speak of a system of higher education in this country, if by system is meant a consciously coordinated organization ... Higher education has not been planned as a whole or developed within a framework consciously devised to promote harmonious evolution. What system there is has come about as the result of a series of particular initiatives, concerned with particular needs and particular situations, and there is no way of dealing conveniently with all the problems common to higher education as a whole’.

     The Robbins Committee was reporting in a decade of educational expansion, national and international. Present circumstances are very different, and in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, there is a note of uncertanity. The expansion has ceased and severe financial cuts on a discriminatory basis have been made by the University Grants Committee, the official body which distributes between universities a global sum alloted to it for university education. In such circumstances it is difficult to plan far ahead: there are large numbers of “unknowns”.

     The biggest contrast within the higher education system is that between so-called “sectors”. The contrast which is most frequently noted is tat between the ‘university sector’ and the ‘polytechnic sector’: indeed, alternative methods of finance and organization in these two sectors have led to the description of the British system as a ‘binary system’. The University Grants Committee is not concerned with financing either polytechnics or the Open University, Britain’s most experimental university institution.

     There are other ‘sectors’ , however. There are institutes and colleges of higher education which do not fit easily into the two-way division. ‘Adult education’ reflects the forces which determined the evolution of the ‘binary system’. Some of it is provided by extra-mural departments of universities, a part in cooperation with voluntary bodies; some of it is provided outside; some of it is provided by the Open University, founded in 1969, which is concerned with continuing education as well as with degree work. There remains a strong bias towards tradition in the ‘university sector’. There are 35 universities in England and Wales, 8 in Scotland and 2 in Northern Ireland: each its own goverment and administration.

     The universities do not have a monopoly of degree-granting power in Britain. Nor are the former colleges of advanced technology the only institutions of higher education which have a technical base. There are now 31 polytechnics in the United Kingdom, all formed since 1966, with more than 200,000 students.

     National ‘policy’ either for universities or polytechnics has not in itself determined the outcome even of educational expansion. The Robbins forecast of 390, 000 student places by 1973-74 was far outstripped and that for 1980 was passed early in that year. Yet there remains great doubt about the 1980s, and recent signs of switches back to vocational education on the part of applicants to universities and polytechnics have owed less to policy than to individual anticipations of market demand and fear of graduate unemployment. The demographic projections look clear enough – a fall in the number in the 18—21 age group - but by themselves only concern one dimension of the future. The keyword is uncertainty, and as The Times put it in 1977, ‘To make “education for uncertainty” the watchword of higher education ... could have interesting consequences for teachers, curricula, institutions and not least students facing the strange economic circumstances of Britain and the Western world.’

     Universities and polytechnics do not exhaust the possibilities in British higher education. There are new institutions which have come into existence or been radically modified since the reorganization of the once monotechnic colleges of education.

     At the time of the publication of the Robbins Report, there had been 153 “training colleges” for the teachers; most of these colleges have now either been merged, or associated with universities or polytechnics, or closed.

 

Notes.

1. Further education (FE) “последующее образование”, иногда - среднее специальное образование. Этот термин употребляется для обозначения любого образования (кроме высшего), получаемого выпускниками школы. В систему “последующего” образования входят колледжи, дающие среднее образование, коммерческие колледжи, профессионально-технические колледжи.

2. Post-compulsory education “послеобязательное” образование, образование, получаемое после обязательного обучения в возрасте 15, а с середины 70-х годов - с 16 лет.

3. the Robbins Committee Комиссия Робинзона (1963-64 гг.) В опубликованном Комиссией докладе (в 11 томах) была предпринята попытка рассмотреть состояние высшего образования в Великобритании и разработать план его дальнейшего развития.

4. the University Grants Committee (UGC) Университетский финансовый комитет (сокр. УФК, основ.в. 1919 г.) Занимается вопросами финансирования университетов , а также открытия, расширения и закрытия факультетов и отделений, штатного расписания и т.п. В настоящее время субсидии УФК, выплачиваемые университетам, превышают 70 %.

5. a binary system бинарная (двусоставная) система. Она предусматривает наличие двух самостоятельных секторов высшего образования: университетского (автономного) (the autonomous sector) и неуверситетского (государственного) (the public sector). Автономный сектор включает университеты и приравненные к ним колледжи, государственный - все остальные высшие учебные заведения и колледжи; иногда этот сектор называют политехническим.

6. The Open University (OU) Открытый университет (его раннее название - University of the Air). В Университет принимает студентов- англичан (достигших 21 года), работающих на производстве. Для поступающих в него не требуется никаких свидетельств об образовании. Процесс обучения в нем строится на широком использовании материалов для заочного обучения, радио, телевидения и аудио-визуальных средств и предусматривает краткосрочное пребывание в специальных летних учебных центрах, находящихся в различных частях страны.

7. adult education образование взрослых. Оно охватывает различные формы образования, как правило, непрофессионального, для взрослого населения, не вовлеченного в стационарную форму обучения в колледже или университете. Иногда этот термин употребляется в значении “непрерывное образование” (continuing education).

 

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