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For nearly two centuries, the University of London has operated in a variety of ways as a national, imperial and international university. It has provided syllabuses and examinations in a wide range of disciplines and subjects for institutions in Britain and overseas to teach to. It has allowed individual students to register for its qualifications, and put together their own programmes of study, using whatever means they could. As well as enabling the development of distance study, the University has also offered an increasing amount and range of provision of this kind itself. This chapter provides a summary and analysis of the University of London's role as an archetypal global institution.

Welcome to the third volume of International Perspectives on Higher Education Research, a series which aims to feature something of the variety of research being undertaken into higher education systems and issues outside of North America. The theme of this volume is International Relations, or, in other words, how students, academics, universities and colleges, and higher education systems relate to each other across international borders.

Changes in the freedoms of individual academics and universities have been gathering apace across the western world since World War II (e.g., Altbach, 2001; Karmel, 2003, p. 2). Such changes have compelled the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to alert the world community to the link between freedoms experienced in the university sector and those in wider democratic systems. In 1998, UNESCO held a World Conference on Higher Education with a specific focus on academic freedom and university autonomy. An international charter resulted, detailing mutual rights, obligations and monitoring mechanisms. The International Association of Universities (IAU), the group responsible for convening the UNESCO debate, emphasised that academic freedom and university autonomy were essential to be able to transmit and advance knowledge:For Universities to serve a world society requires that Academic Freedom and University Autonomy form the bedrock to a new Social Contract – a contract to uphold values common to Humanity and to meet the expectations of a world where frontiers are rapidly dissolving. (cited in Ginkel, 2002, p. 347)

Observation is a neglected data collection method in higher education research. Yet observation holds out the promise of seeing what people actually do, rather than what they say they do (in interviews or surveys) or write down that they do (in documents). It may also be pursued quantitatively and/or qualitatively, using a highly structured data collection instrument or in an open-ended and flexible fashion, carried out live or using recorded material. This chapter explores the limited existing literature on the use of observation in higher education research, speculates on the reasons for its lack of use, and argues for its greater usage in the future.