The place of professional education in higher education in the future

Abstract

On taking office some years ago, an incoming Minister of Education was reported to have said to his senior civil servants something on these lines: ‘Never in the field of human conflict has it been more necessary than now to subjugate the universities to the needs of society and at the same time for the universities to retain their academic freedom. Gentlemen, go away and reconcile those two requirements.’ Well, of course, those two requirements are still not reconciled and for this morning's purposes I will put the dilemma in the form of a stark question: ‘What is higher education for?’, and by higher education I mean education after the age of about eighteen.

Citation

Thwaites, B. (1972), "The place of professional education in higher education in the future", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 24 No. 10, pp. 565-569. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb050372