The Dearing Report
The Dearing Report
Sustaining British Higher Education as a System
The chapter identifies the reasons for the inquiry under the auspices of Dearing, outlines its main recommendations and discusses its impact upon higher education in England. It identifies the main reason for its creation as financial in nature—the sharp decline in per student funding coupled with the threat of some universities to contemplate the imposition of fees. Its recommendations on fees eventually led to variable undergraduate fees to be paid for through income-contingent loans. In other respects, the Inquiry was a failure. It put forward a twenty-year plan for higher education to be steered by government and the dominant higher education interests. A diverse higher education system would be guided by a compact embracing funding, regulation of teaching and learning, the pursuit of research, institutional governance, and embracing a local/regional role. In fact what has developed is the steering of the higher education system through a state-regulated market.
Keywords: funding, income-contingent loans, quality control, leadership, administration, community focus, Dearing inquiry
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