Tertiary education and local government

The Royal Commission on Local Government will by now be sitting in amused judgement on the widely differing views it is receiving as to the most suitable type of administration for further and higher education. NALGO favours a full‐scale region, 10 for the whole country as for the present Regional Advisory Councils, and this view no doubt faithfully reflects the strong preference of local government officers below the very senior rank for employment by an authority large enough to give better conditions and prospects. The West Riding County Council argues that an authority of at least a million people is required to administer a technical college system, but since its own one and a half million can only provide a handful of small colleges it proposes, for good measure, to swallow up all the County Boroughs in its area, making about four million in all. But having gone so far, why does it hesitate to take in Hull and the East Riding, which have for so long been associated with the Yorkshire Council for Further Education, and why does it ignore the growing links of the Southern Humberside with the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Economic Planning Council?