ABSTRACT
The election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1979 can be seen as a turning point in university development. As was shown in chapter one, the wind of change was blowing many years before this, but the universities chose to treat these warnings as a ‘bad Spring’ rather than a change of climate. While perceived potential problems of demography, lack of industrial relevance, escalating costs and so on had been recognised throughout the 1970s, the Thatcher government had the political will to do something about them.
