“It’s so utterly different from how it is now” : The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, an unorthodox case study on the evolution of higher education in England
Résumé
Imagine a place where you could get a grant to do a PhD with no intention of becoming a professor whatsoever; where you’d have complete freedom over your research subject and no pressure to ever finish your PhD; where you would sit on potential new students interview panels; where the most important thing would not be your thesis but the seemingly never-ending process of writing collective research; where your political, cultural and academic activities intertwined; where each weekly general meeting would last for the entire day; where you’d be allowed, nay, encouraged to question the curriculum; and where you wouldn’t even have to register to attend seminars. This somewhat provocative presentation is a fragment of the history of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, commonly referred to as CCCS, founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall at the University of Birmingham. Historical, political and legislative landmarks, such as the protests of 1968, the Gould Report (1977) and the Further and Higher Education Act (1992), evidence some of the changes in universities in England over the past fifty odd years. The historical context of the CCCS is filled with such comments: “We probably wouldn’t be allowed to do that now”, “I don’t know that it could be done now”. By taking these assertions as an entry point, this research endeavors to show, by examining the sociopolitical and education framework of this period, along with the CCCS archive and interviews with former CCCS members and CCCS historians, what have been the evolving factors in higher education in England throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and how it has shaped and eventually determined the fate of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.