Introduction
The half-century before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 witnessed significant changes in British higher education. A succession of Royal Commissions and Acts of Parliament gradually eroded the influence of the Church of England over the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, strengthened the role of the Universities and reduced the influence of the Colleges, encouraged the teaching of new subjects and began to regulate University and College finances. Moreover, some limited attempts were made to encourage the admission of students to Oxford and Cambridge from working-class backgrounds by allowing students to study on a non-collegiate basis; both Universities became centres for the University Extension movement after 1873. In the 1870s, both Oxford and Cambridge began to accept female students, but without any semblance of full equality. Nevertheless, despite a succession of Royal Commissions and exhaustive discussions on reform, Oxford and Cambridge retained their independence and distinctive character. In 1907, Charles Gore, Bishop of Birmingham, spoke in support of another Royal commission for Oxford and Cambridge āin order to secure the best use for all classes of the communityā. He continued, āI venture to think that there can be no reasonable doubt that at present our ancient Universities are allowed to become to an extent altogether beyond what ought to be tolerated, a playground for the sons of the wealthier classesā. 1 However, the social background of the students at Oxford and Cambridge was changing. In the years immediately before the War, Anderson notes āa strengthening of the universitiesā middle-class character as the proportion from landowning families fell, and as business as well as professional families made increasing use of both public schools and universitiesā. 2 These were also years of significant educational change for both Universities with the emergence of a model of teaching based on discussion and analysis, and underpinned by close contact between teacher and pupil, the Oxford tutorial and the Cambridge supervision. This approach began to replace College lectures in the period 1880ā1910.
The years before the outbreak of War also witnessed important changes for the University of London. Central to these changes was the tension between the role of the University as an examining body and the desire of constituent Colleges to develop as teaching institutions in their own right. At one point, in 1887, University College and Kingās College threatened to break away to form a separate University. However, two years later, the Selbourne Commission concluded that a new charter should be granted to the University of London as a teaching institution and that no other University should be established in the capital. Finally, the charter was granted and a reformed, federal University of London emerged as a teaching and research University in 1900. However, further instability followed the award of a charter to the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1907 and subsequent arguments over the possible development of Imperial College as a separate University. In 1913, another Royal Commission concluded that Imperial College should not become an independent University and should be integrated within the University of London; at the same time, the Commission urged a greater role for lay governance of the University, an indication of growing frustration within Government with infighting within the federal University.
In Scotland, the Universities maintained a high level of freedom, sustained by independent funding from Government, and were active in the pursuit of reform. The University of Glasgow at the end of the nineteenth century pioneered attempts to encourage students from poor backgrounds to enter the professions (Robertson 1990) 3 and St Andrews was active in encouraging the admission of women. From 1892, the Scottish Universities could accept and graduate women (Rayner-Canham et al. 2008). 4 Traditionally, the Scottish Universities admitted students from a broad social base, wider than their English counterparts, with about a fifth of students drawn from āworking classā backgrounds. Anderson (2006) writes: āOne reason was that Scottish secondary education was cheap and relatively open, university bursaries were numerous, and from 1901 the Carnegie Trust ā¦ paid the fees of any Scottish born student who applied. Another reason was a stronger tradition of graduate schoolteachers in Scotland than in Englandā. 5
However, the most important changes in the years before the First World War occurred outside the Ancient Universities, through the establishment of a cluster of ānewā or āmodernā Universities offering a very different form of higher education. In 1868, Matthew Arnold had argued for change:
We must get out of our heads all notion of making the mass of students come and reside ā¦ at Oxford or Cambridge, which neither suit their circumstances nor offer them the instruction they want. We must plant faculties in the eight or ten principal seats of population, and let the students follow lectures there from their own homes with whatever arrangements for their living they and their parents choose. It would be everything for the great seats of population to be thus made intellectual centres as well as mere places of business. 6
The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed growing demands for enhanced technical skills among the workforce. At the same time, a series of Acts of Parliament served to transform school education. Forsterās Education Act of 1870 and the subsequent Elementary Education Act of 1880 required free, compulsory education for all up to the age of 10 years. Developments in secondary education were a little slower to have an impact. However, the work of the Bryce Commission (1894ā1895) laid the foundations for the Education Act of 1902 which created Local Education Authorities, responsible for all education below University level. These Authorities took over responsibility for many voluntary schools and were expected to create new secondary schools where no other provision existed. As the numbers studying in secondary schools began to rise at the start of the twentieth century, demand for University education also began to increase; moreover, the expansion in school education, both elementary and secondary, required an increased supply of educated and trained teachers to work in the schools.
In this way, growing interest in University education, changing social expectations and increasing demands from business and industry, often fuelled by international competition, not least from the USA and Germany, prompted a rapid expansion in higher education. University Colleges were established in Manchester (1851), Newcastle (1871), Leeds (1874), Bristol (1876), Nottingham (1877), Birmingham (1880), Liverpool (1882), Reading (1892), Sheffield (1897), Exeter (1901) and Southampton (1902). These Colleges did not yet offer their own degrees and were initially concerned mainly with the preparation of students for Oxford, Cambridge and University of London examinations, and with professional qualifications. Typically, University Colleges emerged to meet the needs of local employers, but soon took on a wider range of interests. Dent (1949) described this process as follows:
ā¦ the foundation, through the generosity of one or more private benefactors, of a college designed to teach chiefly scientific and technical subjects to the people of a great industrial town; the expansion of this into a university college by the addition of āfacultiesā in the human subjects and a department for the training of teachers; and finally the securing of a Royal Charter. 7
In Wales, University Colleges were established in Aberystwyth, Bangor and Cardiff (the University College of Monmouthshire and South Wales). These merged in 1893 to form the federal University of Wales.
At the start of the twentieth century, interest in higher education was growing, fuelled by concerns about the perceived erosion of Britainās global influence and economic competitiveness. Supporters of the ānational efficiency movementā, including Joseph Chamberlain, first Chancellor of the University of Birmingham and a driving force behind the Universityās establishment, and āliberal imperialistsā led by Lord Rosebery were vocal in their criticism of British science and technical education, and in their advocacy for a new emphasis on University education, based on the needs of industry and commerce. This new focus on the importance of a skilled workforce and on the opportunities for self-improvement through education resulted in a significant growth in student numbers. In particular, changing social attitudes helped to stimulate an expansion in the numbers of women entering higher education. In 1910, there were 27,728 full- and part-time students in Britain compared with 20,249 ten years earlier, an increase of 37% in a decade. This is estimated to represent 1.3% of the age cohort in England and 1.9% in Scotland. The number of female students expanded from 3284 in 1900 to 5654 in 1910, an increase of 72%. 8
Underpinning this expansion were important structural changes. A single Government Ministry, the Board of Education, was created in 1899 and the 1902 Education Act aimed to create āa really national system of educationā, with a ārational or organic connectionā between primary and secondary schools, āand through the system of secondary education, with the University education which crowns the whole edificeā. 9 Anderson concludes that āthe new grammar schools allowed the universities to insist on higher entrance standards, and an honours degree became in practice a prerequisite for secondary teaching. No measure did more to fill the arts and science faculties of the civic universities, and to loosen their dependence on immediate local needsā. 10 Moreover, in 1911, students who promised to become teachers were given grants for degree study, providing further encouragement for University recruitment.
Against this background, the University Colleges rapidly grew in institutional self-confidence. A key step forward occurred in 1880 with the establishment of the federal Victoria University able to offer its own degrees, initially based on Owens College, Manchester and soon to include University College Liverpool and Yorkshire College, Leeds. At the beginning of the twentieth century, with the University of London increasingly preoccupied with the delivery of higher education in London itself rather than across the country, and with increasing aspirations towards institutional autonomy, both in governance and in academic provision, the movement to create independent University institutions in the large centres of population in England gathered pace. The University of Birmingham was granted its charter in 1900. Soon after, the Victoria University was dissolved, giving rise to the Victoria University of Manchester (1903), the University of Liverpool (1903) and the University of Leeds (1904). Before the start of the War in 1914, Sheffield (1905) and Bristol (1906) had also gained University status. These were years when, according to Anderson, the ācivic universitiesā ācame of ageā, with a regular recruitment base, some degree of state funding and royal charters which reduced their dependence on local support. 11
Life as a student in these ānewā Un...