LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT: THE COLLEGES AND INSTITUTES OF HIGHER EDUCATION

The colleges and institutes of higher education (CIHE) constitute the least well‐known, the least well‐resourced, and the most varied and complex sector of higher education provision in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the variety and complexity of the institutions involved, both in their present character and in their origins and traditions, are such that it is tempting to view their existence as a “sector” as nothing more than an historical accident. Certainly the manner of the emergence of the colleges from the reorganisation of higher education (and teacher training in particular) during the 1970s contrasts strongly with the purposeful creation of the polytechnics in the years following the publication of A plan for polytechnics and other colleges in 1966. Although the creation of what has become in effect a third higher education sector was in one sense a consequence of the James Report, which proposed diversification in the colleges of education into non teacher training courses, James did not foresee the widespread closures and mergers which were to come. Coming in 1972 after a period of very rapid growth in teacher training, James envisaged the colleges continuing to develop as a separate group, and largely ignored the consequences of demographic change. The birthrate, however, was falling from 1964 onwards, and the implications for the colleges whose main commitment was to the training of teachers were enormous. In the end, it was this decline in the demand for teachers as much as the policy recommendations of the James Report which led to the establishment of the CIHE.