Willetts on Robbins – Yesterday, today and tomorrow

By Jan Petter Myklebust. Fifty years ago the Robbins Report proposed massive expansion of higher education in the United Kingdom – up to 300% over the next two decades. In a report on Robbins, current Universities Minister David Willetts calculates that with British births on the rise again, university places for new entrants will need to rise by another 25% by 2035.
Looking at the number of would-be higher education students who reapply for university after a first rejection, there was unmet demand today of around 50,000 students, Willetts found. Increasing this figure in line with expected demographic change to 2035 would mean the 368,000 current places for first-year students would need to rise to 460,000 entrants.
Willetts authored a report, titled Robbins Revisited: Bigger and better higher education, published by the Social Market Foundation on the 50th anniversary of the hugely influential report of a committee led by Lord Lionel Robbins in October 1963. More...