In chapter 13 of Leviathan (“Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery”), Thomas Hobbes, that great chronicler of “masterless men” in a competitive market economy, graphically describes the fear and anxiety that pervade life in a state of nature. Hobbes begins by noting that “the natural condition of man” is marked by natural equality, competition, diffidence, and vanity and that life in a competitive society of self-directing individuals is one of constant competition for power, wealth, and glory. Life, Hobbes insists, is a zero-sum contest—a competitive race with all the prizes going to the winners. “The comparison of [the] life of man to a race,” he writes in The Elements of Law, “holdeth so well for our purpose. This race we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost.” If it were not for “that great LEVIATHAN … that mortal God … to which we owe … peace and defense,” competition, ambition, and greed would plummet society back into a state of nature and a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Within England's system of higher education, the role of Oxford and Cambridge as defining institutions is scarcely questioned. Whether viewed from a contemporary or a historical perspective, the dreaming spires of the nation's two oldest universities dominate the landscape. More than any comparable pair of institutions in the United States, they set the standards by which all other English universities are measured. According to many accounts of the development of higher education in England, one result of Oxbridge superiority has been a propensity toward “academic drift,” a process whereby newer and/or second-rank institutions copy the curriculum and academic style of elite institutions. England's civic universities appear to have been particularly guilty of this tendency. Established during the Victorian and Edwardian eras by the nation's larger provincial towns in order to meet local needs for higher education, they initially represented a distinct alternative to the ancient universities, not only in terms of their location and the socioeconomic composition of their student bodies but also in terms of mission. Nonetheless, according to many commentators, the civics eventually abandoned their aim of creating a new model for higher education in England which stressed scientific research, practical professional training, regional service, and more open access. Citing the rising proportion of arts graduates, especially during the two decades following World War I, along with increasing pressure to provide halls of residence, modern observers such as A. H. Halsey and Roy Lowe have concluded that the newer universities renounced their original ethos, attempting instead to replicate as much as possible of the Oxbridge ideal amid the smog and squalor of their urban, industrial settings.