Just as Chapter 4 attempted to place the development of mass higher education in the wider context of developments in politics, society and the economy since 1960, so this chapter attempts to place the current condition of UK higher education (and of global higher education, and higher education in other world regions) in the wider context of contemporary society, economy and culture. Again, with regret, the primary focus is on the UK. The only defence is that the UK, for all its Brexit-y claims to be exceptional, is in fact a fairly standard example of an early 21st-century society and economy, at any rate in the developed world.

Introduction

Over the past 60 years UK society has changed in fundamental ways, some of which could be measured in quantitative terms but others which have been more qualitative, even suggestive or speculative. First, the total population has increased substantially. In 1961 it was 52.4 million; by 2020 the total is estimated to have grown to 67.9 million; and it is projected to increase still further to 74.1 million by the middle of the 21st century (ONS, 2019). The growth is explained by increasing life expectancy, natural increase (in other words, the excess of births over deaths) and net migration, which in the mid-2010s amounted to more than 350,000 people a year compared with less than 50,000 as recently as the 1990s. Second, the UK population is older. In 1975 people aged 65 and over made up 14.1 per cent of the total, and by 2025 this proportion is expected to be over 20 per cent. The profile of the UK population reflects three demographic ‘events’: the post-war baby boomers (now in their seventies), their children (now in their forties and fifties) and their grandchildren (now in or approaching their twenties). These three peaks in turn are reflected in striking social realities: the political blocking-power of pensioners and the significance of the ‘grey pound’ in the cultural and leisure sectors; the ambitions, and insecurities, of the middle-aged and middle class; and the exuberance of a youth, and young adult, culture which is key to constructing novel lifestyles and also drives key economic sectors.

Third, the UK population is much more multicultural than it was in 1960, when the UK was still a predominately White and culturally homogenous society (its divisions still largely determined by social class).