| Abstract: |
The variety of manpower needs generated by advanced technology plus all that is known about human variability in aptitude, achievement, interests, motivations, attitudes, values and intellectual dispositions underscore the need for a highly diversified higher education system. Britain has lagged behind other industrial countries in providing a diversified system and might well undertake research on the problem of "fit" between students and institutions. As part of a longstanding interest in differential recruitment, the Center for Research and Development in Higher Education at Berkeley has been engaged in measuring the "non-intellective" characteristics of students, such as autonomy and creativity, and has attempted to determine to what extent institutions nurture intellectual ingenuity. A high degree of variability among students at advanced levels and significant interinstitutional variations in intellectual disposition have been discovered. Increasingly, studies are being directed to the questions of how students change during their educational career and what is the impact on student development of particular university features. Problems of planning and coordination are related to the development of a diversified system. Alternative ways are being sought by institutions that wish to attain distinctiveness while conforming to the broad goals of the system. The constraints of concerted planning and pressure to conform to conventional academic standards are threatening the continuation of educational distinctiveness in Britain and the US. (JS) |