A Personal History of the University of Essex

Written by Professor Hugh Brogan, Department of History, 1974 - 1998

The University of Essex was born during a rare moment of national hope and enthusiasm in the early 1960s, when everything seemed possible and new departures seemed essential. Only 10 per cent of British school-leavers were going into higher education, which was palpably unjust and, for the sake of the nation's future, unwise. So it was decided to found and finance nine entirely new universities, of which Essex was to be one (the others were Sussex, Warwick, East Anglia, Kent, Lancaster, York, Ulster and Stirling). All were places of high and eager ambition for Britain, for education, for science, scholarship and more besides; and although much has changed since 1964 (when Essex received its first undergraduates), and there have been many unexpected developments, it is no exaggeration to say that the great experiment has been a success, and that the vision of the founders has largely been fulfilled.

Colchester Campus 1966

Among those founders Essex County Council perhaps deserves pride of place, for it was that Council which in 1959 launched the proposal to bring a university to Essex and, in 1962, presented Wivenhoe Park to the nascent institution. Enthusiastic citizens of Essex gave abundantly of their time and money to the enterprise - R.A. Butler, a leading member of the Cabinet, author of the 1944 Butler Education Act, and MP for Saffron Walden, accepted the invitation to be the University's first Chancellor - and the first Vice-Chancellor, Albert Sloman, delivered the BBC Reith Lectures of 1963 on the theme of ‘A University in the Making', which are still essential reading for anyone trying to understand the history of the place and, indeed, the history of modern British universities. All went well unti11968, when student rebellions swept the Western world. Their British manifestations never compared in real importance with the riots in Paris, which shook the Fifth Republic to its foundations, or those in the United States, but they captured the headlines both in the newspapers and on television, appalling the respectable (including many academics); and unfortunately for Essex the antics here, partly because they were among the first in the country, attracted nationwide attention. The crisis went on, with diminishing ferocity, for about six years; rebelliousness became, it may be said, a tradition; and the consequences for the University were bad. Local support fell away, and applications from school-leavers slumped. Fortunately for the University's finances overseas students were not deterred, and have always flocked to the place in enthusiastic numbers; but growth slowed dramatically; only in the first decade of the twenty-first century did Essex begin to approach the magic figure of 10,000 students that was originally envisaged (Kenneth Capon, our first architect, proposed to build enough accommodation for 20,000 students, in 28 skyscrapers; but only six of his towers were ever erected).

“The University of Essex was born during a rare moment of national hope and enthusiasm in the early 1960s, when everything seemed possible and new departures seemed essential.”

“Although much has changed since 1964 (when Essex received its first undergraduates), and there have been many unexpected developments, it is no exaggeration to say that the great experiment has been a success, and that the vision of the founders has largely been fulfilled.”

These are the sort of figures which alarm university administrators and displease bureaucrats in Whitehall, but it cannot be said that they disrupted life on the ground. Growth was again seriously checked in the 1980s, but that was a consequence of government policy; the Cabinet had begun to feel ungenerous to all forms of higher education. The university sector as a whole began to suffer from under-investment, the chronic weakness of all state-owned or state-managed British enterprises. Nevertheless, the University of Essex contrived to get on with its business: teaching, learning and research. Albert Sloman's initial policy had been to ensure academic success by creating only a handful of big subject departments, such as Sociology, Literature and Economics; but new departments were steadily added from 1967 onwards, starting with Computer Science and Electronic Systems Engineering. All of them made their mark over the years. As to research, their success has never been denied. The University has long been recognized as one of the 12 best research universities in the country, especially in the social sciences. Nothing more clearly proves the wisdom of the plans made at its foundation, which still guide its course. It is more difficult to assess the quality of the undergraduate experience, but if official inquiries may be believed, teaching and study at Essex are also among the best in the country. As to student life, the bars and the sports centre are always full; musical, theatrical and artistic activity never ceases. Rebelliousness has died out, and the immense cheerfulness which is always so evident on Degree Days is perhaps a sure sign that all is well.

If the consumers are happy, who is to say they are wrong? But the first phase of the University's history is over. It lasted more than 40 years: universities are slow-growing organisms. It can be reckoned a solid success; but the world has changed greatly since 1964 and in the second phase, now opening, the University must still be ready to make radical innovations, innovations as radical as it was itself at its foundation. Problems and proposals for the present and the near future were admirably set out by the Vice-Chancellor, Sir Ivor Crewe, in his Burrows Lecture of 2006, which will serve the next generation as a blueprint in the same way that Sir Albert Sloman's Reith Lectures served his time. Sir Ivor's central point was that the comparatively straightforward idea of a university prevailing in 1963, the idea that its function was to be 'the independent creation and dissemination of knowledge and ideas, unfettered and unmediated by the interests of state, industry, community or ideology’, is insufficient now that what he called the stakeholders are so many and so diverse. He identified the government, students, parents, employers, the local community and academics respectively as so many clients who have strong and legitimate interests in the performance of the universities, including Essex, and stated plainly that while the ancient idea of the university as a true academy, a place for intellectual argument and experiment, for cultural innovation and challenge, and for sturdy independence 'not only from the state but from all organised interests and belief systems' must be preserved, or the whole enterprise will fail, nevertheless Essex must be ready to change by expanding into a 'multipurpose and federal institution' for the whole region between London and Ipswich; by offering a much wider range of educational services than just the traditional academic courses; by diversifying teaching, study and degree requirements to satisfy the legitimate needs of those students who will be increasingly unable or unwilling to undertake the traditional three-year, full-time, residential courses; and by taking very seriously its obligation to invigorate the economy, culture and civic life of Essex and Suffolk. Neglect of this last obligation was perhaps the University's most serious failing in its first phase. 'We were called the University of Essex, says Sir Ivor, 'we happened to be located in Essex, but we were not a University for Essex; our horizons were national and international, not local’. That must now change.

Indeed, it has already begun, conspicuously, to do so. The most impressive innovation of the past few years has been the establishment of a second campus at Southend, which was previously, according to our Registrar, one of the worst 'cold spots' for higher education in the country. Two years ago, in 2005, the School of Entrepreneurship and Business was launched there - the University's eighteenth department; and a big new building demonstrates that the Vice-Chancellor's vision of a federal University is taking concrete form. Yet the main campus, at Wivenhoe Park, continues to grow: in 2006 a second lecture theatre block was opened, and degrees were conferred there for the first time in 2007.

With a total student population on the three campuses and at our partner institutions of some 13,000 the University is now big enough to face the future with confidence, even allowing for the never-ending headache of financing its operations. Its reputation will ultimately rest on its intellectual achievements, not only in teaching and research, but in the application of its expertise in such things as biology, computing and law to the world at large. The second era of our history will take place in a time of great difficulty for all humanity; but the University of Essex seems to be well-prepared (touch-wood!) to meet its challenges.

Professor Hugh Brogan, 2007