Generational Conflict and University Reform

One of the markers of modernity, the features that distinguish between a modern society and economy and an early modern society, is a system of competitive examinations. Before the introduction of such examinations in universities, schools, the civil service, the army and the professions, recruitment and appointment to places of employment was necessarily through the operation of patronage and social connection. In the universities, competitive examinations are often seen by scholars as evidence of progress and ‘reform’. Such cases of ‘reform’ are often, rather crudely, assumed to have started in the Victorian era. This study, by Heather Ellis, based on her doctoral thesis, challenges some of the assumptions in this account. As she acknowledges, reform of the universities, and of Oxford in particular, has been regarded as a response to the French Revolution, and the need to open the institution to a more meritocratic principle. It is clear, however, that the traditional interpretation of the nature of the reform of Oxford has not adequately demonstrated how such reform was achieved. Rather than simply relying on the prevailing, determinist account, Ellis offers an attractive and largely convincing alternative: reform was the product of ‘generational conflict’ between the senior and junior members of the University

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