The coming of the global village: a tale of two inquiries

In 1963, in the UK, a government-appointed Committee on Higher Education (c haired by Lord Robbins) produced its Report, Higher Education. A generation later, a corresponding exercise was undertaken in the UK, through a Nation al Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, chaired by Sir Ron Dearing. Its Report, Higher Education in the Learning Society, was published in 1997 . The two reports share many features, addressing largely similar matters, having overlapping concerns and placing their analyses in an international context. Access, participation, curricula, teaching, standards and academic freedom are just some of the issues that both reports tackle. However, in their envisaged positioning of higher education, their discourse and their vision, discontinuities can be detected between the two reports. The Robbin s Report can be understood as an internal report of an academic community, assured of itself and of higher education as an existing social and educati onal good. Its audience was the wider society and the polity: it was a docu ment arguing for an expansion of the sector on its own terms. The Dearing R eport, in contrast, can be understood as an external document of the wider society and the polity. It attempted to draw together the interests of mult iple stakeholders and, with higher education as its major audience, sought to reposition higher education such that it became a force for continuing e conomic regeneration. Robbins is the internal voice of a rural village, tha t of higher education itself. Dearing is an external set of voices telling a story especially of an emerging urban village of the global economy.