Academic Standards and Mass Higher Education*

Abstract

Abstract This article considers the role of academic standards in the wider context of the problem faced by modem societies of how to reconcile the survival and provision of elite higher education with the emergence of mass education. From the advantage of an outside perspective it examines the division between higher and further education and reflects on the implications of that separation and on the costs and consequences of the academic standards that characterise the British system of elite higher education. It considers the prospects for the emergence from further education of a truly mass system of institutions marked by lower per capita costs and lower standards standing alongside and linked with a system of higher education marked by very high academic standards. The article concludes that what is still lacking is a general recognition that all degree‐granting higher education is only a part, albeit a central part, of a broad system of post‐secondary and continuing education, marked by a diversity of standard, mission and cost, which has as its mission the advanced education of a whole society and not just its leadership.

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