Skills governance and the workforce development programme

The relationship of higher education institutions and government has been transformed from the deferential and partnership approach of the post war years to a mechanistic and managerial ‘system’ which, as suggested by Tapper and Salter (1978), paralleled the fragmentation of elite structures within UK society in the 1960s and 1970s. This shift in relationship has led to the emergence of a recognisable ‘higher education sector’, with policy-development and implementation mechanisms that are often contentious, competitive and non-consensual. Whereas the limited number of institutions and the elite nature of higher education in the pre-1960s world led to a consensual, informal approach, supported by the ‘buffer’ of the University Grants Committee (Kogan & Hanney 2000, p. 143), the more explicit establishment of a societal and economic role for higher education, which emerged through the Robbins report and the creation of Colleges of Advanced Technology (CATs) and, later, the polytechnics, resulted in increased competition for funding, influence and alternative conceptions of ‘higher education’ (Niblett, 1981). Through the economic readjustments of the 1970s and 1980s, the British education system became increasingly identified as both the reason for low productivity and the mechanism through which future prosperity could be secured (Wolf, 2003). Higher education was increasingly seen as a necessary part of the economic infrastructure of the nation, responsible for the provision of an effective labour force. The Robbins committee, in stating four aims and objectives for higher education, including ‘instruction in skills for employment’ (Robbins, 1963) was reflecting the transition to an environment in which the expressed purposes of higher education increasingly needed to acknowledge the perceived economic imperatives. Whereas higher education had previously not been much more than a ‘cultural apprenticeship’ (Ainley 1994, p. 25) for the majority of students, its contribution to the economic and societal objectives of the nation became increasingly explicit. Institutions that had developed from the ‘service tradition’ of education (Robinson, 2007) and had origins in local linkages with industry, local government and the public sector professions, were to become the key vehicle through which this role, and student numbers, would expand (Robbins, 1963). Pratt (1997, pp.26–29) documents this through the rise of student numbers in the 1980s and early 1990s, which occurred predominantly in the polytechnics. Some institutions doubled in size over a 10 year period, offering courses that would primarily sit within vocational or service traditions, including engineering and technology, management and business studies.