Before John Major’s government converted Britain’s erstwhile polytechnics into universities in the 1990s, higher education in Britain was strictly a two-tier affair. Universities, channelling the now-distant model of Grecian gymnasia – still snooty about classics and the liberal arts – admitted students keen to study ‘for the sake of studying’. Polytechnics, home traditionally to the nation’s engineering schools, were ranked beneath, sullied with the taint of practical utility.
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