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EDUCATING THE NATION: IV. SUBJECT CHOICE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2017

Peter Mandler
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Abstract

This address tracks the choices made by students at English schools (O-Level, GCSE and A-Level) and at British universities (undergraduate degree) of what subjects to study over the whole of the period since the Second World War. There are marked long-term trends towards a greater diversity in subjects studied, especially at A-Level and degree level, and this tended to reduce over time the dominance of science, to the advantage of a range of subjects including social studies, traditional humanities and latterly creative arts. These trends reflect (most of all) the growing size and diversity of the student body staying on to further study, but also the broadening of the labour market which this more diverse body of students is entering, and social and cultural changes favouring creativity and self-expression in education. The address closes with a reflection on the possible significance of a very recent halting and even a reversal of these trends in subject choice, to the apparent benefit of the sciences.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 27 , December 2017 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Celia Phillips and Anna Vignoles for helping me navigate through this technical subject, to Gary McCulloch and David Edgerton for discussing with me their work on science education, and to Laura Carter for discussing with me her work on history education.

References

1 For example, Reid, Margaret I., Barnett, Bernard R. and Rosenberg, Helen A., A Matter of Choice: A Study of Guidance and Subject Options (Windsor, 1974)Google Scholar; Stables, Andrew, Subjects of Choice: The Process and Management of Pupil and Student Choice (1996)Google Scholar; Purcell, Kate et al., Applying for Higher Education: The Diversity of Career Choices, Plans and Expectations (Warwick, 2008)Google Scholar.

2 Liam Hudson, Contrary Imaginations: A Psychological Study of the English Schoolboy (1966); Liam Hudson, Frames of Mind: Ability, Perception and Self-Perception in the Arts and Sciences (1968).

3 Michael F. D. Young, ‘An Approach to the Study of Curricula as Socially Organized Knowledge’, in Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, ed. Michael F. D. Young (1971); Woods, Peter, ‘The Myth of Subject Choice’, British Journal of Sociology, 27 (1976), 130–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Hammersley, Martyn, ‘A Myth of a Myth? An Assessment of Two Ethnographic Studies of Option Choice Schemes’, British Journal of Sociology, 42 (1991), 61–94 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This literature focuses on the choice to enter post-compulsory education rather than the particular path through it, though the emphasis on ‘immediate earning prospects’ ought to apply to choice of course as well: see e.g. Christopher A. Pissarides, ‘An Overview of the Demand for Post-Compulsory Education by British Men, 1955–77’, in Human Resources, Employment and Development, iii: The Problems of Developed Countries and the International Economy, ed. Burton Weisbrod and Helen Hughes (1983), 147–56.

5 For some preliminary work on this subject, on which I draw here, see my ‘The Two Cultures Revisited: The Humanities in British Universities since 1945’, Twentieth-Century British History, 26 (2015), 400–23, abridged and revised as ‘The Humanities in British Universities since 1945’, American Historical Review, 120 (2015), 1299–310; and, for comparisons between US, UK and Australian experiences, ‘Rise of the Humanities’, Aeon, 17 Dec. 2015, https://aeon.co/essays/the-humanities-are-booming-only-the-professors-can-t-see-it.

6 Committee on Higher Education, Report (1963) (hereafter, Robbins Report), Appendix ii (A): Students and their Education, Cmnd 2154-ii, 21–4. Because science education was more expensive, even in 1938 the arts accounted for only 28 per cent of the University Grants Committee's (UGC) funding for departmental maintenance, vs. 72 per cent for the sciences. Report of the Committee on the Provision for Social and Economic Research (1945–6) (i.e. the Clapham Report), Cmd 6868, 15.

7 Based on the data for 1962 from DES, Statistics of Education, ii (1961–79).

8 Sir Frederick Ogilvie, British Universities (1948), 8, 13.

9 This was the case as early as 1950 and remained so through the 1950s and 1960s, and applies not only to universities but also to other tertiary education: OECD, Development of Higher Education 1950–1967 (Paris, 1971), 125–6, 147; Celia M. Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice at School and University (1969), 110–11.

10 See Carol Dyhouse, Students: A Gendered History (Abingdon, 2006), ch. 4, on the persistence of male dominance in the post-war British university.

11 McKibbin, Ross, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), 46–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Olive Banks, Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education: A Study in Educational Sociology (1955), 178–82; Gary McCulloch, Edgar Jenkins and David Layton, Technological Revolution? The Politics of School Science and Technology in England and Wales since 1945 (1985), 17–19. For a slightly earlier period, Carol Dyhouse's survey of graduates from the 1930s found that the vast majority of those who claimed to have had vocational goals on entering university identified medicine, engineering and science; this was, however, a retrospective survey from the 1990s. Dyhouse, Students, 36.

13 Schwarz, Leonard, ‘Professions, Elites, and Universities in England, 1870–1970’, Historical Journal, 47 (2004), 951–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 955–6.

14 Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 11, 32–4; Robbins Report, Appendix ii (B): Students and their Education, Cmnd 2154-ii-I, 27.

15 Political and Economic Planning, Graduate Employment: A Sample Survey (1956), 59, 71; Robbins Report, Appendix i: The Demand for Places in Higher Education, Cmnd 2154-i, 302–4, Appendix ii (B): Students and their Education, Cmnd 2154-ii-I, 151–2. Below graduate level, at teacher training colleges, the gender bias was even more marked.

16 86 per cent in Oxford but only 71 per cent in Cambridge: Political and Economic Planning, Graduate Employment, 29. Science at Oxbridge rose over the course of the 1950s to 40 per cent in 1963, but this was still well below the national average which Robbins calculated at 57 per cent. Robbins Report, Appendix ii (A): Students and their Education, Cmnd 2154-ii, 24.

17 This story is well known: it runs from the Barlow Report on Scientific Manpower, 1946, to the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy which first reported in 1948, to the targets set by its Committee on Scientific Manpower in 1956 and 1961. See, for example, McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, Technological Revolution?, 27; Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order 1940–1990 (1991), 83–95; cf. the argument in Edgerton, David, Warfare State: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge, 2006)Google Scholar, rooting this trend in the demands of war; and the important empirical survey by Moser, C. A. and Layard, P. R. G., ‘Estimating the Need for Qualified Manpower in Britain’, in Economics of Education, i: Selected Readings, ed. Blaug, M. (Harmondsworth, 1968), 287–317Google Scholar.

18 For economic thought and research, see Blaug, Mark, ‘The Empirical Status of Human Capital Theory: A Slightly Jaundiced Survey’, Journal of Economic Literature, 14 (1976), 827–55Google Scholar; for a contemporary appreciation of the rise of human-capital theory, Vaizey, John and Debeauvais, Michael, ‘Economic Aspects of Educational Development’, in Education, Economy, and Society, ed. Halsey, A. H., Floud, Jean and Arnold Anderson, C. (New York, 1961), 37–49Google Scholar.

19 Human-capital thinking was already evident in the Crowther Report of 1959 and it found a champion in government in Lord Hailsham, minister of science from 1959, who deplored ‘the techniques of the Party Chairman’ required to do manpower planning and advocated investment in general education as more compatible with Conservative advocacy of free choice: see the discussion in McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, Technological Revolution?, 64–6, 71.

20 Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 37–44.

21 McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, Technological Revolution?, 165–6, provides an early and brief exception.

22 Robbins Report, Cmnd 2154 (1963), 166–8; Kenneth Gannicott and Mark Blaug, ‘Scientists and Engineers in Britain’ (1973), in Economics and Education Policy: A Reader, ed. Carolyn Baxter, P. J. O'Leary and Adam Westoby (1977), 128. Nevertheless, Robbins still predicted a further mild swing towards science in the near future.

23 Council for Scientific Policy, Enquiry into the Flow of Candidates in Science and Technology into Higher Education, Cmnd 3541 (1967–8) (hereafter 2nd Dainton Report), 8.

24 Carswell, John, Government and the Universities in Britain: Programme and Performance 1960–1980 (Cambridge, 1985), 65–9Google Scholar; McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, Technological Revolution?, 165. There was also the particular logistical problem that universities – under government pressure and UGC guidance – had been planning for a big influx of scientists and building new labs and research facilities to accommodate them, which were now beginning to look like white elephants, unless something was done. Universities raised the alarm after the admissions round of 1964: Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 1.

25 See Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, xxi–xxii, for Moser's preface.

26 2nd Dainton Report, preface.

27 Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, though it offered scrupulous documentation of the swing, doubted the possibility of a coherent explanation for it, and was also closely focused on reversing it: 2–4, 45, 116–19.

28 Ministry of Education, 15 to 18. A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) (1959) (i.e. the Crowther Report), i, 223–5, 262–3. Crowther was not so bothered by ‘subject-mindedness’, but the issue was taken up by A. D. C. Peterson of the Oxford Department of Education – an early champion of the less specialised International Baccalaureat – and injected into the debate over the ‘Dainton swing’. See Peterson, A. D. C., ‘The Myth of Subject-Mindedness’, Universities Quarterly, 14 (1959–60), 223–32Google Scholar; A. D. C. Peterson, ‘Britain's Missing Scientists’, New Statesman, 5 Mar. 1965, 358; F. S. Dainton to G. J. Spence, 25 Feb. 1965: The National Archive (TNA), ED 189/12; Butcher, H. J., ‘An Investigation of the “Swing from Science”’, Research in Education, 1 (1969), 38–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 2nd Dainton Report, 2, 68–70, 74–5.

30 On Scotland, Dainton's optimism about the benefits of later specialisation was polemically rebutted by McPherson, Andrew: ‘The Dainton Report – A Scottish Dissent’, Universities Quarterly, 22 (1967–8), 261–70Google Scholar; ‘‟Swing from Science” or Retreat from Reason?’, Universities Quarterly, 24 (1969–70), 30–6; cf. 2nd Dainton Report, 52, 64. For a study broadly supportive of Dainton, but no clearer about causes, see Barnard, G. A. and McCreath, M. D., ‘Subject Commitments and the Demand for Higher Education’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General), 133 (1970), 358–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 OECD, Directorate for Scientific Affairs, ‘Development of Higher Education in OECD Member Countries: Quantitative Trends’, 3 Apr. 1969: TNA, UGC 7/1245; UGC, University Development 1967–1972, Cmnd 5728 (1974), 25; McPherson, ‘Dainton Report’, 273nn42–3.

32 Entwistle, N. J. and Duckworth, D., ‘Choice of Science Courses in Secondary School: Trends and Explanations’, Studies in Science Education, 4 (1977), 68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Duckworth, Derek, The Continuing Swing? Pupils' Reluctance to Study Science (Windsor, 1978), 10–13Google Scholar; and see also Alan Smithers, ‘Occupational Values of Students’, Nature, 24 May 1969, 725–6.

33 Duckworth, The Continuing Swing?, 32.

34 Duckworth, D. and Entwistle, N. J., ‘The Swing from Science: A Perspective from Hindsight’, Educational Research, 17 (1974), 52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Dyhouse, Students, 97–102.

36 Duckworth and Entwistle, ‘The Swing from Science’, 52; and on girls’ choices for Biology, see Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 11–12.

37 Schwarz, ‘Professions, Elites, and Universities’, 951, 955–6, 961–2. Accordingly, both medicine and teaching began a long decline in their share of career destinations for graduates.

38 OECD, The Educational Situation in OECD Countries (Paris, 1974), 36–7Google Scholar; Gannicott and Blaug, ‘Scientists and Engineers’; Wilkinson, G. C. G. and Mace, J. D., ‘Shortage or Surplus of Engineers: A Review of Recent U.K. Evidence’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 11 (1973), 105–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There remains doubt as to whether the demand for engineers was slackening or whether manpower planning had over-supplied.

39 OECD, Employment Prospects for Higher Education Graduates (Paris, 1981), 15–16 Google Scholar, 26–9; UGC, University Development 1967–1972, 27–8.

40 2nd Dainton Report, 81, and cf. ‘Chemists Hit Out at Dainton’, Times Educational Supplement, 15 Mar. 1968, 876; Eric Esnault and Jean Le Pas, ‘New Relations between Post-Secondary Education and Employment’, in OECD, Towards Mass Higher Education: Issues and Dilemmas (Paris, 1974), 133–5, 140.Google Scholar

41 Jenkins, Andrew and Wolf, Alison, ‘Employers’ Selection Decisions: The Role of Qualifications and Tests’, in What's the Good of Education? The Economics of Education in the UK, ed. Machin, Stephen and Vignoles, Anna (Princeton, 2005)Google Scholar, 164; UGC, University Development 1967–1972, 27–8.

42 New entrants were always more likely to be vocational, but in the 1950s and 1960s, this still allowed them considerable scope for subject choice, as teaching (both arts and science subjects) was their principal vocational goal; later in the century, new entrants gave vocational rationales for a wider range of choices. Purcell, Kate and Pitcher, Jane, Great Expectations: The New Diversity of Graduate Skills and Aspirations (Warwick, 1996), 6–7.Google Scholar

43 Carswell, Government and Universities, 104–5; Gannicott and Blaug, ‘Scientists and Engineers’, 142–3; and see UGC, University Development 1967–1972, 25–6, a bold reversal of the views it had held at the end of the previous quinquennium.

44 Blaug, ‘Human Capital Theory’, 846–8; Williams, Gareth, ‘The Economic Approach’, in Perspectives on Higher Education: Eight Disciplinary and Comparative Views, ed. Clark, Burton R. (Berkeley, 1984), 81–2Google Scholar; Blaug, Mark, ‘Where Are We Now in the Economics of Education?’, Economics of Education Review, 4 (1985), 18–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jenkins and Wolf, ‘Employers’ Selection Decisions’, 152–3, 156. In different versions, this could be a form of human-capital argument – ‘screening’ recognised the value of higher education – or an argument against it – ‘screening’ was about reproduction of the social order.

45 Education: A Framework for Expansion, Cmnd 5174 (1972–3), 30–1.

46 Duckworth, The Continuing Swing?, 43.

47 Duckworth's studies halted just at the point when the swing halted too. I have calculated myself the changing shares of A-Level subjects from Statistics of Education, ii, and Statistics of School Leavers, CSE and GCE (1980–5), and for degree subjects from Education Statistics of the United Kingdom (to 1978); Statistics of Education, vi: Universities (1979); and Universities' Statistical Record, University Statistics, i: Students and Staff (1980–5).

48 For the imagined swing back to science, one of many false dawns, see, e.g., McCulloch, Jenkins and Layton, Technological Revolution?, 194–200; Shattock, Michael L. and Berdahl, Robert O., ‘The British University Grants Committee 1919–83: Changing Relationships with Government and the Universities’, Higher Education, 13 (1984), 491–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanderson, Michael, Educational Opportunity and Social Change in England (1987), 14–15Google Scholar; Stewart, W. A. C., Higher Education in Postwar Britain (Basingstoke, 1989), 147CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This delusion was particularly prevalent in the early 1980s during Keith Joseph's tenure as education secretary, when university administrators, civil servants and businesspeople tumbled over each other to assure the minister that his dreams were coming true.

49 For subjects’ share of CNAA degrees, Statistics of Education, iii: Further Education (1971–80). Although CNAA's share of total degrees awarded was modest at first, by 1980 it was awarding about 20 per cent of all first degrees nationally.

50 On academic drift, see Stewart, Higher Education, 140–1, 203–10; Sanderson, Michael, ‘Education and the Labour Market’, in Work and Pay in Twentieth-Century Britain, ed. Crafts, Nicholas, Gazeley, Ian and Newell, Andrew (Oxford, 2007), 287–9Google Scholar. Roy Lowe, Schooling and Social Change 1964–1990 (1997), 30–42, sees academic drift as beginning in comprehensives.

51 For an unusually robust defence of the polytechnics’ response to student demand, rather than manpower planning from the centre, see the account of Christopher Ball's 14 July 1982 speech and its endorsement by the National Union of Students, in memorandum submitted by the NUS, ‘Transbinary Co-operation’, 14 Mar. 1983: Education, Science and Arts Committee, Higher Education Funding. Minutes of Evidence Together with Appendices Monday, 28 March 1983, HC293 (1982–3), 69–70. Ball was chair of the National Advisory Body, which had been set up to provide a coordinating body for the polytechnics.

52 Duckworth, The Continuing Swing?, 43; Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 13.

53 Botany and Zoology were popular new subjects at A-Level but in 1972 they were amalgamated with Biology.

54 There were 82,000 good O-Level passes in Art in 1984 vs. 74,000 in History. Statistics of School Leavers, CSE and GCE.

55 See also Smith, Cyril S., ‘The Research Function in the Social Sciences’, in The Future of Research, ed. Oldham, Geoffrey (Guildford, 1982), 152Google Scholar.

56 See above, pp. 10–12.

57 Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 29–30.

58 Dyhouse, Students, 115–16; Hunter, Laurence C., ‘Employers’ Perceptions of Demand’, in Higher Education and the Labour Market, ed. Lindley, Robert (Guildford, 1981), 12–13Google Scholar, 20–2, 38–9.

59 Phillips, Changes in Subject Choice, 30–1; Duckworth, The Continuing Swing?, 48.

60 Vera Morris, ‘Investment in Higher Education in England and Wales: A Subject Analysis’ (1973), in Economics and Education Policy: A Reader, ed. Carolyn Baxter, P. J. O'Leary and Adam Westoby (1977), 76–9, 86; G. L. Williams, ‘The Events of 1973–1974 in a Long-Term Planning Perspective’ (1974), in ibid., 54–5. This kind of research was through the 1980s only in its infancy. See Rudd, E., ‘The Right Balance of Subjects?’, in Education, Science and Arts Committee, 5th Report, The Funding and Organisation of Courses in Higher Education, HC787 (1979–80), 625–6Google Scholar.

61 Between 1975 and 1980 alone, all science-based subjects fell from 40 per cent to 28 per cent of CNAA degrees. Statistics of Education, iii.

62 Mandler, Peter, ‘Educating the Nation: II. Universities’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, sixth series, 25 (2015), 17–18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Alison Wolf, Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth (2002), 128–30; Hacker, Andrew, The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions (New York, 2016), 33–9Google Scholar.

64 See, among many examples, the 1987 White Paper Higher Education. Meeting the Challenge, Cm 114 (1986–7), quote at 7; SET for Success: The Supply of People with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Skills. The Report of Sir Gareth Roberts’ Review (2002), esp. 26–31.

65 Smith, Emma, ‘Do We Need More Scientists? A Long-Term View of Patterns of Participation in UK Undergraduate Science Programmes’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 40 (2010), 282CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 For assessments of the motivations behind subject choice through the period of rapid expansion, see Wikeley, Felicity and Stables, Andrew, ‘Changes in School Students' Approaches to Subject Option Choices: A Study of Pupils in the West of England in 1984 and 1996’, Educational Research, 41 (1999), 287–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purcell et al., Applying for Higher Education.

67 These figures minimise the swing because Psychology, which was categorised as a biological science, represents a growing proportion of the science share. Between them Psychology and Sports Science represent 72 per cent of all students categorised as studying biological sciences. Smith, ‘Do We Need More Scientists?’, 288–9, 294–5.

68 For an unusual observation of the continuing swing in this later period of expansion, see Smith, Emma, ‘Is There a Crisis in School Science Education in the UK?’, Educational Review, 62 (2010), 189–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a puzzling assertion of a swing to science in the early part of this period, see Susan Harkness and Stephen Machin, ‘Graduate Earnings in Britain, 1974–95’, Department for Education and Employment, Research Brief No. 95 (Feb. 1999).

69 Purcell et al., Applying for Higher Education, 162–3, suggests the opposite – that new entrants (both ethnic minorities and students from lower socio-economic classes) are more purposefully vocational in subject choice. But in fact the differences between stated reasons for subject choice by class are small, and as the differences in actual subject choice are small too there is reason to think these differences arise from attempts to justify rather than from actual knowledge of the graduate labour market. There is more evidence of purposeful vocational choice among ethnic minorities. Cf. ibid., 35, 38, 39, 60–6. See also Purcell, Kate et al., Futuretrack Stage 4: Transitions into Employment, Further Study and Other Outcomes (Warwick, 2012), 11–14.Google Scholar

70 Though cast in a rather different language, there are some parallels between my argument and that of Michael Gibbons, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow, The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Society (1994), 3–8, 11, 76–80, 83–4, 94–9, 105, 110. On the ‘new diversity of graduate skills and aspirations’, see Purcell and Pitcher, Great Expectations.

71 www.gov.uk/government/speeches/nicky-morgan-speaks-at-launch-of-your-life-campaign, accessed 20 Nov. 2016.

72 The Age of STEM: Educational Policy and Practice Across the World in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, ed. Brigid Freeman, Simon Marginson and Russell Tytler (2015).

73 Jack Britton, Lorraine Dearden, Neil Shephard and Anna Vignoles, ‘How English Domiciled Graduate Earnings Vary with Gender, Institution Attended, Subject and Socio–Economic Background’, IFS Working Paper W16/06 (Apr. 2016), esp. Figs. 3, 4, 5. For some earlier attempts based on British Household Panel and Labour Force Survey data, see Walker, Ian and Zhu, Yu, ‘Differences by Degree: Evidence of the Net Financial Rates of Return to Undergraduate Study for England and Wales’, Economics of Education Review, 30 (2011), 1177–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ian Walker and Yu Zhu, ‘The Impact of University Degrees on the Lifecycle of Earnings: Some Further Analysis’, BIS Research Paper 112 (Aug. 2013).

74 This was very much the conclusion drawn fifteen years earlier by Wolf, Does Education Matter?, 27–33, 37, 45, 196–7. For a counter-argument, see Arnaud Chevalier and Ian Walker, ‘United Kingdom’, in Education and Earnings in Europe: A Cross Country Analysis of the Returns to Education, ed. Colm Harmon, Ian Walker and Niels Westergaard-Nielsen (Cheltenham, 2001), 315–16. It is of course possible that ‘graduateness’ adds value but not specific subjects. For some sociologists’ arguments for the screening or ‘allocative’ role of education, see Liu, Yujia and Grusky, David B., ‘The Payoff to Skill in the Third Industrial Revolution’, American Journal of Sociology, 118 (2013), 1330–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldthorpe, John H., ‘The Role of Education in Intergenerational Social Mobility: Problems from Empirical Research in Sociology and Some Theoretical Pointers from Economics’, Rationality and Society, 26 (2014), 265–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Hacker, Math Myth, 16, 21.

76 As it is, engineering employers complain that STEM graduates do not often linger in engineering jobs, but move on to management and finance, which are better paid. SET for Success, 107, 165–8; Hacker, Math Myth, 33–4; and see also Liu and Grusky, ‘Payoff to Skill’, 1349–51.