The Ugc and the Management of British Universities (Society for Research into Higher Education)

The University Grants Committee for much of its history was the most widely admired machinery for funding universities in the English speaking world. Why was it brought to an end? This book argues that in spite of its success, the UGC failed to live up to its rhetoric in a period of great national change and financial difficulty; its demise, however, was a consequence of its failure to convince Government that it could manage the university system effectively. The author places the UGC in its historical context and explores how its relationship to government, the research councils and the universities changed. He examines the creation of the new universities of the 1960s, the development of research selectivity, the role of private funding, the impact of the Cardiff affair on government/university relations and the part played by the Public Accounts Committee in bringing the UGC to an end.