This is a
fantasising reflection on the development of Higher Education in the
UK.
By giving us the
“birth narratives” of many of the Russell Group Universities you
find that for all the glory of their current ivory towers they were
touch and go for many years, and many of the questions asked of them
in their early years were the same as those asked of the 1992 Group
as they moved over to University status.
Also they provide
great case studies in “imagined traditions” - that even the
newest University graduates in gowns linking themselves back to the
monastic Colleges – and the “Architectural History” part of the
sub-title also plays on this – somewhere in the mid-Twentieth
Century there was a shift from building ancient seats of learning to
modern cutting edge research centres (even when in both cases the
building was going to house the Chemistry or the Classics
Department).
The part played in
the story by Keele made me smile – Keele is a personally
significant place, that it is of importance within a national story
is pleasing – even if the conclusion of Whyte is those things that
would have made Keele have been lost to conformity with a wider
lowest common denominator…
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