Polytechnics: the radical imperative

Uncertainty and gloom hang over the educational world. Fear is rife. Many, particularly in the higher education world, fear not a short term dislocation of activity, but a major discontinuity. Nowhere is this anxiety more widespread than in the Polytechnics. Established in the optimism and white heat of the 60s' technological advance, they appear to be losing their struggle for identity as a different, separate, but equal sector of higher education. The symptoms manifest themselves in a variety of forms such as: