Robbins Report

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The Robbins Report was commissioned by the British government in the 1960s to look into the future of higher education in the United Kingdom. The Committee on Higher Education was chaired by Lord Robbins from 1961 to 1964. After its publication, its conclusions were accepted by the government on October 24, 1963.

The report recommended immediate expansion of universities, and that all Colleges of Advanced Technology should be given the status of universities. Consequently, the number of full-time university students was to rise from 197,000 in the 1967-68 academic year to 217,000 in the academic year of 1973-74 with "further big expansion" thereafter.

The legacy of the report is plain to see. It led to the establishment of the plate glass universities, notably the universities of Stirling, Strathclyde, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Lancaster, Sussex, York, and Warwick, as well as prompting substantial expansion in the existing universities of the UK. Lord Robbins himself would later become the first Chancellor of the new University of Stirling in 1968.

As a footnote, the Senior Research Officer for the committee that drew up the report was a Richard Layard, who became a well-known British economist.