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A History of the Concept of the
University of Sussex
From Balliol-by-the-Sea to Plate Glass University

David M. Berry

A university cannot be said to have risen to the heights of its obliga-

tions until it has so designed its teaching as to ensure for all its stu-
dents who use their opportunities to become, in words spoken by
J. S. Mill more than eighty years ago, ‘capable and cultivated human
beings’.¹

In this article I look at the early history of the founding of the University
of Sussex in the #9%&s and its links to a perceived moral crisis, particularly
emerging after the second world war. This crisis is connected, in part, to
the shock caused by the collapse of the once-respected German univer-
sities into the arms of the Nazi regime, and the consequent importance of
a liberal and democratic university system to prevent it happening again.(
It was also connected to worries within the British establishment that a
massi)cation of higher education in the UK could lead to a decline in the
moral character of the graduates that were being turned out.³ Partly this

¹ See University Grants Committee in W. G. Stone, ‘University Commentary from

Brighton’, Higher Education Quarterly #2, no. , (#9-.): 22%, doi:#&.####/j.#/%.-220,.#9-..
tb&&9-#.x.
( David Phillips, ‘Lindsay and the German Universities: An Oxford Contribution to the
Post-War Reform Debate’, Oxford Review of Education %, no. # (#9.&): 9#–#&-.
³ Walter Moberly, Crisis in the University (London: Macmillan, #9/9). The shift in posi-
tion by the University Grants Committee towards the establishment of new universities in
the post-war period, starting with the University College of North Sta1ordshire and the
University of Sussex was in2uenced by the concerns around the e1ects of the Nazi regime
upon the German universities. This is demonstrated in Moberly’s writings, but also it is
re2ected in Alexander Dunlop Lindsay’s experience of being asked to help with the rebuild-
ing of the German universities in the post-war period and his subsequent discussions and

David M. Berry, A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex: From Balliol-by-the-Sea to Plate Glass
University In: History of Universities Volume XXXVII/1–2 2024. Edited by: Robin Darwall-Smith and
Mordechai Feingold, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2025.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198946519.003.0007
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

258 History of Universities

was seen to be a result of the specialisation of students, and the move,

particularly in Red Brick universities towards a more anonymous and
lecture-based mode of study, together with concerns about the rising
intensity of industrialism and its pressures towards a perceived one-

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dimensional individual.3 I argue that these factors are crucial for contextu-
alising the decision by the University Grants Committee in the approval
of the creation of the University College of North Sta1ordshire (now Keele
University) and how these eventually led to the approval for the University
College of Sussex.4 But the creation of Sussex (or Keele) was not a

justi)cations for new universities see Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, ‘The Commission on
German Universities’, Higher Education Quarterly /, no. # (#9/9): .,, doi:#&.####/j.#/%.-
220,.#9/9.tb&2&2%.x; Moberly, Crisis in the University; Phillips, ‘Lindsay and the German
Universities’; Drusilla Scott, A.D. Lindsay, A Biography (Blackwells, #90#). John Fulton was
educated at Balliol as a pupil of Lindsay and was in2uenced by him in matters both philo-
sophical and educational. An interesting outcome of this is that John Fulton retained an
interest in what he called the social and political ‘psychopathology’ of the Nazi period and
later supported the establishment of a Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology at
Sussex in the #9%&s funded by David Astor, see David Astor, ‘Limited Study of Political
Psychopathology (David Astor Correspondence)’ (#9%,), SxUOS#/#/#/#0/,, University of
Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep. This was encour-
aged both by Fulton and Asa Briggs who had ‘taken a keen interest in the project and shown
much goodwill towards it,’ see Norman Cohn, ‘A Brief History of the Columbus Centre and
Its Research Project’ (#9.&), http://www0.bbk.ac.uk/thepursuitofthenazimind/Astor/
KMBT,-&2&##&9#/#%/&-&.pdf. The centre was run by Norman Cohn and later renamed
the Columbus Centre (#9%,-#9.&), see also David Astor, ‘Diary of the Project’ (#9%/),
http://www0.bbk.ac.uk/thepursuitofthenazimind/Astor/KMBT,-&2&##&9#/#%/#-,.pdf;
Cohn, ‘A Brief History of the Columbus Centre and Its Research Project’.
3 Adolf Lowe, The Universities in Transformation (London: The Sheldon Press, #9/&).
4 Cragoe claims that Sussex was formed within the context of the Cold War, describing
it as a ‘university of the Cold War’ although not strictly a ‘Cold War university’, see Matthew
Cragoe, ‘Sussex: Cold War Campus’, in Utopian Universities: A Global History of the New
Campuses of the 1960s, ed. Miles Taylor and Jill Pellew, #st edition (London ; New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2&2&), -%. His argument that there was ‘a distinctive alignment
between the cultural framing of the new provision at Sussex and the map of Cold War
geopolitics’ is, however, unconvincing, see also Stefan Collini, ‘Utopian Universities:
A Global History of the New Campuses of the #9%&s’, Reviews in History, 2&2#, https://
reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2/,/; Cragoe, ‘Sussex: Cold War Campus’, %/. Instead, I argue
that Sussex’s historical formation points to a greater in2uence of the experience of the
founders of Sussex in working class education of the Workers’ Educational Association
(WEA) (particularly through John Fulton and his experiences leading to the founding of the
University College of North Sta1ordshire in #9/9), see Sir James Mountford, Keele: An
Historical Critique, Illustrated edition (London, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul Books,
#902), -/., the second world war (Briggs worked at Bletchley Park, for example, see Asa
Briggs, Secret Days: Codebreaking in Bletchley Park: A Memoir of Hut Six and the Enigma
Machine (London: Frontline Books, 2&##). and particularly the collapse of the German
universities into the arms of the Nazi’s, see W. B. Gallie, A New University: A.D.Lindsay and
the Keele Experiment, First Edition (London: Chatto & Windus, #9%&); Lindsay, ‘The
Commission on German Universities’; Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, ‘The Function of the
Universities’, Nature #%%, no. /2,, (December #9-&): #&&9–#&#&, doi:#&.#&,./#%%#&&9a&;
Moberly, Crisis in the University; Phillips, ‘Lindsay and the German Universities’; Scott,
A.D. Lindsay, A Biography. The structure of Sussex’s Schools of Study was very much
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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 259

straightforward process, and there were a number of complicated and

di5cult hurdles to clear before approval could be given for creating a new
university.
As Thomas Arnold wrote, ‘no one ought to meddle with the univer-

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sities, who does not know them well and love them well’.6 And this is how
Sir Walter Moberly’s opened his important book of #9/9, The Crisis in
Universities.7 In it he diagnosed a coming moral crisis for the university in
the new industrial societies that emerged after World War II. He drew on
others such as ‘Bruce Truscot,’ the pseudonym of Edgar Allison Peers, a
professor at the University of Liverpool, the author of Redbrick University
in #9/,, who called for the return of universities to the advancement of
knowledge through research. Approvingly citing the #9/- Harvard Report,
General Education in a Free Society which argued that universities should
contribute to a wider democratic culture in industrial societies. Lastly, he
cited J. D. Bernal’s #9,9 The Social Function of Science which argued that
the inevitable rise of applied science would lead to a ‘Copernican change’
in human a1airs and human culture. Moberly, who was chairman of the
University Grants Committee (UGC) from #9,-–#9/9, drew these strands
together in a book that was widely read in government and academia. Of
course, his subject matter was as old as the university itself. He was not
alone in diagnosing that under conditions of modernity societies were
under increased pressure from industrial and political changes that were
not being addressed by the universities. But coming from the outgoing
Chair of the UGC it made an impression on politicians, academics and
the wider reading public.
Moberly identi)ed drift in the existing universities, a lack of any clear,
agreed sense of direction and purpose ampli)ed by World War II and

in2uenced by Moberly’s dislike of departmentalism, shared by Lindsay and others, see Asa
Briggs, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’, in The Idea of a New University: An Experiment
in Sussex, ed. David Daiches (London: André Deutsch, #9%/), %&–.&; Collini, ‘Utopian
Universities: A Global History of the New Campuses of the #9%&s’. This was re2ected in the
approach of Fulton and Briggs, see Briggs, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’; John Fulton,
‘The Shape of Universities’, in The Expanding University: A Report, ed. W. R. Niblett
(London: Faber, #9%2), /%–%,; Moberly, Crisis in the University; Mountford, Keele, 2.9–29&.
6 Thomas Arnold was the Head of Rugby School, a historian and a writer on Church
matters. He was the father of the poet, Matthew Arnold. The full quote is ‘no man ought to
meddle with the Universities who does not know them well and love them well; they are
great and noble places - and I am sure that no man in England has a deeper a1ection for
Oxford than I have - or more appreciates its inimitable advantages. And therefore I wish it
improved and reformed - though this is a therefore which men are exceedingly slow to under-
stand’, see Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, The Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold. Suppl. to
the First Five Editions, #./0, --.
7 Moberly, Crisis in the University.
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260 History of Universities

particularly ‘accentuated by the moral collapse of the German universities

under the Nazi regime’.8 He writes,
Of no universities had the intellectual prestige been higher; during the last
century they had been a model to the world. Yet when the stress came, with

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certain honourable exceptions among individuals, [the German univer-
sities] showed little resistance, less indeed than the Churches. They failed to
repel doctrines morally monstrous and intellectually despicable . . . they suf-
fered themselves to become an instrument for manipulating public opinion
in the hand of the powers that be.9
Moberly argued that because the universities confused appearance and
reality, they had become agents of drift and su1ered from a lack of values.
He quoted Ortega y Gasset who wrote of the university that ‘it is vicious
to pretend to be what we are not, and to delude ourselves by growing
habituated to a radically false idea of what we are . . . An institution which
feigns to give and require what it cannot is false and demoralised’.¹:
Moberly argued that ‘the universities are not now discharging their former
cultural task,’
the creation, generation by generation in a continuous 2ow of a body of men
and women who share a sense of civilised values, who feel responsible for
developing them, who are united by their culture, and who by the simple
pressure of their existence and outlook will form and be enlightened public
opinion.¹¹
He summarised the situation in four points. Firstly, the universities claim
to educate ‘rounded persons’ with ‘an understanding of themselves and
their place in the cosmos’ but in fact a large number of students are narrow
specialists with extremely limited horizons. Secondly, the universities
claim to develop a liberal and critical attitude to study, but in fact too often
produce an attitude which is self-centred and utilitarian. Thirdly, the uni-
versity aims to cultivate objectivity and impartiality, but increasingly
defers to the unexamined assumptions and attitudes of the student, failing
to develop their capacity for reason and judgement. Lastly, the university
professes to be a community which has a transforming in2uence on its
students and sta1, awakening a sense of wonder through contact with
inspiring persons. But increasingly there is little vital communication
between departments or faculties, or between students and sta1, o1ering
only an a la carte menu of study options and little overall sense of unity or
coherence in their degree.¹( It was within this context of a diagnosis of

8 Moberly. 9 Moberly, 22, 2,. ¹: Moberly, 2,.

¹¹ Moberly, 22. ¹( Moberly, 2/.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 261

moral uncertainty, combined with a rising birth-rate and a realisation that

the applied science of the growing colleges of technology would need to be
balanced with a liberal and humanistic education that helped to create
the conditions for the government to look favourably on new kinds of

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university.
Moberly’s importance was not only as a former Chair of the UGC from
#9,- to #9/9, but was also a former Principal of University College of the
South West of England (#92-–2%) and Vice Chancellor of the University
of Manchester (#92%–,/). He was also in2uential on many of the key
thinkers and planners for the new universities who were to emerge during
the post-war period whether through his institutional role or through
personal connections.¹³ These connections were very important, for
example, on the foundation of the University of North Sta1ordshire (later
Keele University) by Alexander Dunlop Lindsay.¹3 Indeed, W. G. Stone,
one of the key architects of the University of Sussex, liberally quoted from
Moberly’s work in a #9-% Education committee memorandum for the
County Borough of Brighton which concerned the foundation of the,
then, University College of Sussex, citing, that ‘a technocratic society is as
repugnant to the tradition of England and indeed of Christendom as is a
bureaucratic one’.¹4

¹³ see Tom Steele and Richard Kenneth Taylor, ‘Oldham’s Moot (#9,.–#9/0), the
Universities and the Adult Citizen’, History of Education ,9, no. 2 (March 2&#&): #.,–#90,
doi:#&.#&.&/&&/%0%&&9&2.%-/09.
¹3 Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, known as Sandie Lindsay, was Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, he joined Oxford in #92/ becoming Master of
Balliol College and later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from #9,- to #9,..
Lindsay was a key academic supporting the adult education movement and this inspired
John Fulton’s interest in this area, becoming chairman of the Universities’ Council for Adult
Education and the council of the National Institute of Adult Education (both #9-2–-), see
Asa Briggs, ‘John Scott Fulton’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. David
Cannadine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2&&/), #, doi:#&.#&9,/ref:odnb/,99.0. After
he retired in #9/9 from Oxford, at 0& Lindsay became one of the founders and the )rst
Principal of the University College of North Sta1ordshire, later granted a Royal Charter in
#9%2 to become Keele University. This creation of a new university was a crucial development.
The ‘di1erence between Keele and the later batch of new universities’, Asa Briggs noted,
were ‘more than di1erences of historical period: they were di1erences of personnel. No later
university had its Lindsay. It is a mistake to think that any new university starts with a tabula
ras’ see Asa Briggs, ‘Asa Briggs Reviews “Innovation in Higher Education: New Universities
in the United Kingdom” ’, Focus: The News Magazine of the University of Sussex, #9%9, ..
¹4 Moberly, quoted in W. G. Stone, ‘Memorandum to the Director of Education’ (#9-%),
SxMs-9/0, University of Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections at The
Keep. Moberly returned repeatedly to the theme of academic ‘neutrality’ when he further
writes, ‘such an abdication of responsibility [by assuming that universities expert knowledge
would be wholly at the disposal of those who sit in the seats of authority] was the fatal error
of the German universities during the Hitler regime, and the present revolt of many scien-
tists against it is signi)cant’, see Walter Moberly, The Universities and Cultural Leadership,
Walker Trust Lectures on Leadership, XI (Oxford University Press, #9-#).
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262 History of Universities

As can be seen, the idea of a university, at least within the British con-
text, was under scrutiny amongst intellectuals.¹6 The government cog-
nisant of demographic growth, together with the funding council, the
Universities Grants Committee, was supportive of a projected growth of

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#&% in student numbers to #,-,&&& by #9%&. The UGC stated in #9-0 that
‘this expansion . . . could be achieved in the existing universities, plus one
new one, the University College of Sussex’.¹7 It is within this background
that the Robbins report was commissioned. The Robbins committee met
from #9%# to #9%, and was crucial in enabling the acceleration of Sussex’s
transformation from a university college into a fully-2edged university
able to award its own degrees.¹8 Robbins ‘relied on the right of the indi-
vidual quali)ed by ability and attainment to a university education’ and
‘he thought it impractical to measure the extent of the state’s )nancial
responsibility by the yardstick of the future need for di1erent kinds of
skilled services’.¹9 The government was already communicating with the
academic sector and o1ering hints of the likely direction of the university
sector before #9%& and was open to fresh models as demonstrated by the
Anderson Report.(: This opened what I call the Robbins parenthesis, a rare
moment in academic and governmental thinking that allowed for new
ideas to be tried, but also, and importantly, funded by the state and driven
by demand from suitably quali)ed students. Sussex University which by
now had a Royal Charter and was teaching undergraduates was, therefore,
ideally placed to take the fullest advantage of this shift in thinking in the
British establishment.
The idea of a university that infused the Sussex university design was
that it looked towards the future with ‘maximum possible 2exibility and
freedom.’ The university was, as Lord John Fulton, the )rst Vice-Chancellor
of Sussex was to describe, created with ‘a long period of gestation’.(¹ In its
early conceptualisations it was crucially understood as being a national
university, rather than being based in new or old towns, in large industrial

¹6 Stefan Collini, Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, First Edition (Oxford ; New
York: OUP Oxford, 2&&%), /%2.
¹7 Asa Briggs, ‘A Founding Father Re2ects’, Higher Education Quarterly /-, no. / (#99#):
,#,, doi:#&.####/j.#/%.-220,.#99#.tb&#-0-.x.
¹8 The Robbins Report was published in #9%,.
¹9 R. J. Blin-Stoyle and Geo1 Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity: A New University and the
Future (Brighton: Harvester, #9.%), 2#&; Report Robbins, ‘Higher Education (Robbins
Report)’, #9%,, https://education-uk.org/documents/robbins/robbins#9%,.html.
(: Colin Anderson, ‘Grants to Students (Anderson Report)’, #9%&, https://education-
uk.org/documents/anderson#9%&/index.html; Ourania Filippakou and Ted Tapper,
Creating the Future? The 1960s New English Universities, #st ed. 2&#9 edition (New York, NY:
Springer, 2&#9), /.
(¹ John Fulton, ‘New Universities in Perspective’, in The Idea of a New University:
An Experiment in Sussex, ed. David Daiches (London: André Deutsch, #9%/), 9.
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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 263

centres, or small ‘cathedral cities’. Sussex, from its beginning was intended
to be a national university that would recruit students from the country as
a whole. By locating the university on a 2&&-acre site / miles outside
Brighton with a proposed ,&&& student cap, it was a deliberate policy to

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encourage the members of the university to think ‘upon problems for
whose solution another perspective, another time-scale is needed’.(( That
is, that Sussex should aim to draw students ‘for a few years aside from the
distractions of the here-and-now’. For this, a sense of community between
scholars and students was considered crucially important, with under-
graduates in particular ‘[being] able to work with distinguished scholars to
create the conditions for achieving high academic standards’.(³ Here we
can hear the echoes of Fulton’s early educational training in Platonic phil-
osophy and Cartesian rationalism, the notion of ‘clear and distinct’ ideas,
which he was taught at St Andrews and Balliol College. Fulton believed
that education is ‘making the future’ and as such this raised the question as
to whether the ‘ “future” is to be a tailor-made society whose features are
clearly imprinted and pre-determined by [people’s] decisions in the past or
laid down by present authority’ or whether the ‘teacher’s responsibility for
the future [is] discharged when [they] have done all that can be done to
raise the powers of the individuals committed to [their] charge to their
highest capacity, in the con)dence that, if they have been so prepared, the
future which they shape will be the best attainable’.(3 For a world envis-
aged as being of rapid technological change, early proponents of the
University of Sussex thought that traditional educational practices were no
longer appropriate and would need to be changed so that ‘we are . . . saying
our say about the future’.(4 As such, Sussex was to be ‘born into a society’
of institutions that ‘accept as )nal the arbitration of human reason together
with all the implications of that acceptance’.(6
Early thought about Sussex university was therefore concerned with
mobilising and arranging a set of values, ideas, and norms around which
the new university community was to orient itself. These early debates
took in a range of in2uences, from the traditional, such as John Henry

(( Fulton, #-. According to Briggs, Fulton ‘attached an almost mystical signi)cance to

the )gure of ,&&&’, and Briggs was ‘unhappy both about the argument and its consequences
for Sussex . . . [and he] wanted a university of more than ,&&&, a university with a broad span
of interests’, see Briggs, ‘A Founding Father Re2ects’, ,29. Sussex in 2&2#/22 had #9,.,-
students HESA, ‘Where Do HE Students Study? | HESA’, 2&2,, https://www.hesa.ac.uk/
data-and-analysis/students/where-study#provider.
(³ Fulton, ‘New Universities in Perspective’, #%.
(3 Fulton, #0. (4 Fulton, #0.
(6 Fulton, #.. As previously described, Fulton was greatly in2uenced by his progressive
mentor Alexander Dunlop Lindsay at Oxford, who was a Labour party member as well as
an academic.
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264 History of Universities

Newman and, as mentioned above, more recent critics such as Bruce

Truscot and Walter Moberly, who sought to diagnose problems with
existing teaching at Oxbridge and Redbrick universities. However, the
mobilisation of theories and ideas of the university were nonetheless par-

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ticularised due to the very speci)c historical and material conditions under
which Sussex was to emerge. Envisaged as a new university that would
address certain shortcomings in the university sector, but without treading
on the toes of the technical colleges with their emphasis on applied science
and technology, Sussex was seen as an experimental institution and this
was very much taken in mind by the people responsible for its early incep-
tion and development. Crucially, Sussex was not to be a civic university, in
the Redbrick tradition, nor a collegiate university, such as Oxbridge, but a
new university built ex nihilo on newly purchased land. This was agreed
not only with the founders of the university but also with the government
and the university grants committee.
In terms of the study and scholarship within the university this would
have necessary implications for the ‘duty of the university’ to ‘ensure that
its studies involved exacting, disciplined work’, that was ‘in depth’ and
that ‘2exibility of mind would be a necessary condition of a fully e1ective
intellectual contribution by the graduates-to-be’.(7 The structure of these
studies was in2uenced by Oxford’s Greats, through the idea of a main
discipline studied in depth alongside cognate, ‘minor’, ‘contextual’ studies
‘which would naturally illuminate and be illuminated by the “major” sub-
ject and by one another’.(8 Early on, the question of ‘how to teach?’ was
answered by a commitment to the tutorial system rather than the lecturing
system. Lectures were seen as voluntary but that the ‘university holds to be
of prime importance . . . that a strong element of individual tutorial teach-
ing (based on undergraduate written work) should be part of the experi-
ence of every student’.(9 For Fulton this would have three ‘outstanding
virtues’,
First, it makes the [student] active and forces [them] to measure [their] own
identi)able work against that of a professional in the particular )eld of study.
Second, it prescribes that such activity should be regular (week by week) and
not spasmodic or belated. Third, it o1er the possibility (not unerringly but
largely with success) of a special and valuable relationship between teacher
and [student].³:
As J. P. Corbett, the Professor of Philosophy at Sussex, explained, ‘our
intention at Sussex is therefore to make the tutorial, rather than either the
lecture or the [seminar] class, the main means of undergraduate instruction.

(7 Fulton, #.. (8 Fulton, #.. (9 Fulton, #9. ³: Fulton, #9.

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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 265

This is a drastic departure from the practice of modern English univer-

sities, though not, of course, from that of Oxford and Cambridge; one can
indeed say that what we are doing is to adapt the principle of a tutorial
system, as developed at [Oxbridge], to the conditions of a modern

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university’.³¹ For Sussex, this modern tutorial system consisted of ‘an
arrangement under which each undergraduate attend one or two sessions
each week with a tutor in groups of not more than )ve members’, so that
‘the system therefore counters perhaps the greatest enemy of intellectual
progress amongst undergraduates: the passive collection of unanalysed
material’.³( This tutorial system was aimed towards the )rst year in par-
ticular as ‘the main e1ort should be devoted to students who are just
beginning their course rather than to those who are concluding it’ and has
the added value of developing personal contact between teacher and stu-
dent in such a way as to encourage them to ask for help or for the teacher
to notice when a student is struggling. A secondary value was placed at
Sussex on the commitment to academic democracy that the tutorial sys-
tem engendered by sharing teaching across both junior and senior faculty
allowing for a ‘certain independence of the university hierarchy’.³³
Sussex was to be able to give an ‘education of taste’ through ‘the archi-
tecture of the new university; its landscaping; furnishing and decoration;
the pictures on the walls, the musical life of the place)’.³3 It was for this
reason that Basil Spence was appointed, who, it was thought, could trans-
late these ideas into a new university estate. Although this would be a
rather di5cult relationship due to his disregard for )nancial constraints,
indeed, Spence was also famously nicknamed ‘Sir Basil-Expense’ due to
his cost over-runs and expensive designs.³4 Sussex aimed to ‘ensure for its
undergraduates the fullest development of their whole personalities on
which their e1ective membership in the future of the free society
depends’.³6 This was to be done by the careful selection of students to
ensure that they form a ‘richly diverse body, stimulating the whole univer-
sity through di1erences of social origin, of educational background, and of
vocational motive . . . and appropriate proportions of men and women,
overseas students . . . and so on’.³7 Thus, an orderly tutorial framework for
teaching would allow for ‘maximum freedom for personal intellectual
development’ and which would allow for a ‘humane and satisfactory

³¹ J. P. Corbett, ‘Opening the Mind’, in The Idea of a New University: An Experiment in

Sussex, ed. David Daiches (London: André Deutsch, #9%/), 20.
³( Corbett, 2.. ³³ Corbett, ,2.
³3 Fulton, ‘New Universities in Perspective’, #9.
³4 William Whyte, Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain’s Civic
Universities. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2&#%), #-&.
³6 Fulton, ‘New Universities in Perspective’, 2&. ³7 Fulton, 2&.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

266 History of Universities

examination system’. For Fulton this would enable students to contribute

to a university society marked by ‘its insights, liveliness and vitality’ and
able to ‘emerge armed against the encroachments of uncritical uniformity
which are the result of the modern mass media of communication and

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entertainment’.³8
These ideas were bought together for the University of Sussex and for-
mally organised with a series of documents titled ‘Logistics of Development’
from the ‘building committee’ which )rst met at Marlborough House on
Old Steine in Brighton in December #9%#.³9 The committee was chaired
by Lord Shawcross in the early years, who was later to become the second
Chancellor of the University, and were often lively a1airs. But the actual
conceptualisation of the idea of a university of Sussex, or rather as a uni-
versity college as it actually started out, began some years before this.
Although the University’s Royal Charter was granted on the #% August
#9%#, it was )rst registered as a limited company under the name the
‘University College of Sussex.’ The application for a Royal Charter
stemmed from proposals ‘formulated in the winter of #9-- and approved
by Brighton Town Council in March #9-%’.3: But in actuality the idea of
a university college in Sussex had been )rst proposed as far back as in
November #9## at a mayoral banquet at the Royal Pavilion by Charles
Edward-Clayton who in a vote of thanks ‘took the opportunity to put in a
powerful and eloquent plea for the founding of a university in Brighton’.
The following week, the chairman of the Education Committee at Brighton
council strongly supported a proposed motion and a month later on a cold
and damp day on #2th December, #9##, the mayor of Brighton convened a
public meeting.3¹ The mayor argued that ‘we want to bring the possibility
of university education to [Sussex student’s] doors; we want to put the
coping stone on the excellent education already provided’.3( Indeed, a Mr
Hannah, the son of the Dean of Chichester, argued that he wanted ‘to
show the North that we are just as good as they are’.3³ The enthusiasm of
the public meeting led to a resolution being passed that ‘in the highest
degree desirable that a college of university rank should be established for
the county of Sussex with a view to such institution becoming recognized
as a college of the University of London, or in combination with other

³8 Fulton, 2&. ³9 Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity, -.

3: W.G. Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, in The Idea of a
New University: An Experiment in Sussex, ed. David Daiches (London: André Deutsch,
#9%/), #%..
3¹ Stone, ‘University Commentary from Brighton’, 22/; Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the
Foundation of the University’, #%9.
3( Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #%9.
3³ Stone, #%9.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 267

similar institutions on the south coast forming part of a separate

university’.33 The Bishop of Lewes proposed the formation of a committee
of local leaders with an executive formed by Mr Hannah, Mr F. Bentham
Stevens and the Education O5cer for Brighton, Mr Hackforth (later

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replaced by Mr Thomas Eggar).
This committee acted quickly and agreed to develop a proposal for
incorporation within the University of London and which would have
required an extension of the ,&-mile limit imposed on the University by
its Charter. The executive committee had examined the establishment of
‘(i) an independent university, (ii) a university college, forming in con-
junction with other institutions a university for the south coast and (iii) a
university college associated with an existing university’.34 The )rst option
was dismissed as the money required was not forthcoming or available, the
second option was rejected due to the communication issues thrown up by
a network of south coast institutions, not to mention the lack of prestige
it might have. Finally, the third option would have the option of taking
support and guidance from an established university and this would also
help with developing standards and educational policy. Oxford and
Cambridge were dismissed as possible collaborators as they tended not to
work very well with new institutions, and where they had they had tended
to be ine1ective, if not actively blocking new competitors. So London was
the most compelling partner and as a Royal Commission had been formed
which was considering removing the ,&-mile restriction on its ability to
form new colleges within its federal structure, it made sense for the com-
mittee to try to pursue that idea.
The proposed university college was planned to have departments of
arts, science, engineering and mathematics and later law, medicine, com-
merce and agriculture. It would have a similar structure to other colleges,
‘a supreme Court, consisting of representatives of the local education com-
mittees, of universities and of the college teachers, as well as donors and
co-opted members; a Committee to be appointed by the Court; and an
academic Council’.36 To the relief of the Executive of the Committee, the
Royal Commission recommended in April #9#, for the ‘recognition of
Schools of the University London should include the County of Sussex.
The Committee began an appeal for funds but unfortunately a year later
the )rst world war broke out and the country was plunged into a war.37 Of
the £.&&& that had been promised (£002,&9, in 2&2, adjusted for in2a-
tion), only £2.&& had been received (£20&,2,2 in 2&2,) and after the
Armistice the original plan was made too di5cult by new conditions that

33 Stone, #%9. 34 Stone, #0#. 36 Stone, #02.

37 Stone, ‘University Commentary from Brighton’, 22/.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

268 History of Universities

had been established for new university colleges with the University Grants
Committee ‘recommending economy and concentration on “consolidat-
ing existing activities” ’.38 A consequence of which, the university planned
for Sussex narrowly missed being brought into existence in #9#/.

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In #92- a new attempt was made to try to take forward the university
idea, building on a Sussex University College lectureship which had been
formed from the previous monies within the existing Brighton Technical
College.39 However, the estimated £2-&,&&& that was calculated to be
necessary (£#2 million in 2&2,) was di5cult to )nd in the new climate and
there were few contributions. Instead, the new money collected was again
redirected to the Technical College in Brighton.4: In #9,/ the Board of
Education created a scheme for the Brighton and Sussex Student’s Library
and Education Foundation using £/,9-& (£29&,2%. in 2&2,) to form a
library for local students and promoting lectures, the books of which were
housed in the Technical College.4¹ Attempts were meanwhile made in
#9/0 to change the Brighton Technical College into a university and
following a meeting with the Chair of the University Grants Committee,
Sir Walter Moberly, it was clear that the UGC was not interested in turning
a successful technical college into a new university, even if it had by now
begun teaching the University of London degrees, with over /&& students
having passed the degree.4( A Ministry of Education o5cial informed the
Technical College that it would not want to implement a change that
might be detrimental for technical education and teacher training. In
#9/0–/. a new proposal was made in the Brighton Draft Scheme of
Further Education for a University College to be built adjoining the
rehoused Technical College, with halls of residence, common rooms and
libraries, but the relationship between these two colleges were found to be
unconvincing, and there was the added problem of a proposed regional
technical college. Even later in the #9-&s it was still not clear to funders
and the government that more university colleges were needed, particu-
larly as the purpose and nature of a university for the post-war world had
still not been convincingly articulated. Indeed, in #9-/ the Parliamentary
and Scienti)c Committee noted that ‘for the time being there is no need
to envisage any further expansion of the university student population’.4³

38 Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #02.

39 The Technical College was founded in #.90.
4: The Technical College was later to merge with Brighton Art College to become
Brighton Polytechnic in #90& and later the University of Brighton in #992.
4¹ At the last meeting of the Trustees for the Brighton and Sussex Student’s Library and
Education Foundation the remaining funds and the books were transferred to the new
University of Sussex.
4( Stone, ‘University Commentary from Brighton’, 22-.
4³ Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #00.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 269

The local council got the message and replied to a query by Councillor
Cohen in early #9-/ that the idea of upgrading the Technical College to
university status was unlikely as ‘the winds were unfavourable and the
barometer low’.43

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But in December #9-/, Lord Salisbury announced a surprising new
government policy on these matters, he stated, ‘there is room for advanced
work in selected Technical Colleges . . . but for work complementary to
that provided by the universities: advanced courses in close association
with industry and in close relation to the less advanced work in the tech-
nical college system’.44 New technical quali)cations were planned, equiva-
lent to degrees, with the aim of producing new colleges of technology that
concentrated on professional studies. By #9--, Brighton Council was
beginning to sense that the tide was turning and with a growing birth rate
argued, ‘for those who are convinced of the need for a University College
of Sussex and who wish to see their dreams become a reality the position
today . . . is more favourable than at any time since #9## . . . It may be that
both employers and future employees can be persuaded that a university
education has something far more valuable to o1er than mere technical
training for a career, and that the nation may become increasingly edu-
cated as well as instructed’.46 Brighton and Sussex could certainly claim ‘a
long history of ambition and endeavour’, and with the new focus on tech-
nical training at the Technical College which had withdrawn University of
London degree courses, it was felt that a complementary research institu-
tion with good liberal arts education provision was made more necessary.
Whilst the Technical College could provide the practical training needed
for technically trained employees, the university college could focus on
basic science, social sciences, and the humanities. Indeed, the South East
was one of the few counties in the UK without a university and with the
growing social and cultural developments in Brighton and Sussex it was
ideally placed for such an institution.
Initially, the university college of Sussex was understood in the context
of a ‘small university’. Recent universities had small numbers of students,
Exeter had 9,2, Southampton had .%,, Hull 0#-, Leicester %-&, North
Sta1ordshire /9-.47 The small university concept was based on the idea
that they would help to engender a sense of community, and with little
funding available for large scale expansion of student numbers, proposals
for the university college of Sussex settled on .&& students. At the time
a college of .&& student would need income of approximately £2&&k

43 Stone, #00. 44 Stone, #00. 46 Stone, #09. 47 Stone, #.&.

 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

270 History of Universities

(just over £/ million in 2&2,).48 The cost to build the college was esti-
mated at £# million (just over £#2 million in 2&2,), with an expectation
that the Treasury would fund 9&% of the initial cost, the rest being met
from the local authorities. Suggestions were made for an experimental col-

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lege, such as established in North Sta1ordshire, particularly in relation to
a student’s right to be ‘a capable and cultivated human being’ rather than
being oriented towards the ‘prevailing vocationalism and its attendant
specialism’.49 However, the University College of North Sta1ordshire’s
style of organisation was expensive with a low sta1-student ratio and a
four-year degree with a general foundation in the )rst year, instead a more
traditional organisation of teaching in relation to the University of
London’s degrees was considered more appropriate. By June #9-%,
Brighton Council had agreed to make available #/- acres at Stamner park
on a 999 year lease at £# per annum (about £2& a year in 2&2,).6: Lord
Hailsham made clear in a speech to the Royal Pavilion, ‘there could be no
continued advance in technology without reference to science which was
a vocation of the universities’.6¹ The University Grants Committee wrote
to the proposers, ‘while the committee [the UGC] would not wish to limit
the ultimate development of the university college they would envisage it
as covering initially a range of pure science and the humanities but not
applied science’.6(
On 2&th February #9-. the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a
new programme of over £%& million for new university buildings in #9%&-
%, (£#.2 billion in 2&2,), of that £#.- million had been allocated to the
University College of Sussex (£29 million in 2&2,). A condition of the
funding was that of a grant of a Royal Charter which would be assessed by
an Academic Advisory Committee. Due to restrictions imposed by the
Education Act of #9// it was actually di5cult to give approval to transfer
money from the local councils to the University College until it was a legal
entity, however due to ‘benevolent sophistry’ the Minister agreed that if
the College Council, which by this point had been formalised, were
incorporated into a company with the name University College of Sussex,

48 By comparison the University of Sussex had an actual income of £,/%.2 million in

2&2#/22.
49 Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #.#.
6: The ‘999 years and the rent is a peppercorn’ was con)rmed by the University of
Sussex’s Director of Finance in 2&2,, ‘it started as £#, and is indexed, so this year is the
princely sum of £,%#’ to Brighton and Hove County Council, quoted from Allan Spencer,
Email correspondence (#, October 2&2,). The extra acres to make up the 2&&-acre require-
ment were endowed with part of the Chichester estate which now comprises the Innovation
Centre land and part of Falmer village.
6¹ Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #.2.
6( Stone, #.-.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 271

he would consent to funding of the nascent university college. On 2&th

May #9-9, a company of that name was registered with the Board of Trade,
with its registered o5ces at Brighton Council.
The University Grants Committee was sympathetic to the idea of a new

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approach to university studies, part of which would be a move away from
the traditional departmental organisation which was seen as rigid and
which was thought to over emphasise excessive specialisation or syllabuses
which were overloaded.6³ As a consequence, in Brighton an advisory com-
mittee was formed to look into the matter of the structure of teaching
at the new university. This became known as the Academic Planning
Committee and had a general agreement that the studies at the university
college should be complementary to the Technical College, that they
‘should range over the arts and social sciences (which should be read by
half the students) and pure science, and that any engineering course should
be of a more general nature than those at the Technical College’.63 In
September #9-9 John Fulton, who was Principal of the University College,
Swansea, was appointed as the )rst Principal of the new University College
of Sussex.64 Fulton had seemed likely to become the ‘Master of Balliol
College, Oxford . . . instead he choose the challenge of creating a modern
university’.66 But this remained the case only for a short while, as the idea
of a self-standing university was now preferred by the UGC and the uni-
versity college was granted full university status and so by the time the
university opened in #9%# Fulton had become the )rst Vice Chancellor of
the University of Sussex.
John Fulton was keen to take onboard the suggestions for how a univer-
sity might function, and particularly the importance of a ‘new type of
curriculum as well as residence and tutorial-type teaching’ where he was in
broad agreement with a desire for Sussex to have the ‘prime objectives . . . to
o1set the stress on vocationalism and to o1er something more than

6³ Briggs, ‘A Founding Father Re2ects’, ,#,. Interestingly, Asa Briggs was on this com-
mittee from #9-9 to #9%0. Briggs was also appointed in #9-9 to the ‘New Universities
Committee’ of the UGC, which recommended that ‘new universities should be chartered’,
see Briggs, ,#2. This was before he was o1ered a Professorship at Sussex by Fulton in #9%&,
which he took up later in #9%&.
63 Stone, ‘Steps Leading to the Foundation of the University’, #...
64 The shortlist of candidates for the role of Principal of the University College of Sussex
noted in Council Minutes from % Jan #9-9 were: Mr J. S. Fulton – Principal of the University
College, Swansea, Mr J. S. Morrison – Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
Mr J. A. Radcli1e – Reader in Physics, Cambridge, University, Fellow of Sidney Sussex
College. The agreed salary was £,-&& per annum (£%0,%%& in 2&2,)*plus ‘a house and usual
expenses’, see Ted Shields, ‘COUNCIL I: Council Minutes’ (#9%#), SxUOS#/#/2/,#/2,
University of Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep.
66 Fred Gray, ed., Making the Future: A History of the University of Sussex (Falmer:
University of Sussex, 2&##), 0.

* Erratum: The figure of £67,660 should be £94,660 in 2023

 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

272 History of Universities

training for speci)c quali)cations’.67 As Fulton explained at a conference

on new universities in #9%#,
At Sussex we are going to move away from the single-subject honours course.
In Arts, we propose to have no Departments. Professors and lecturers will be

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appointed in subjects but not to departments. After a common )rst part
(taken at the end of one year) the student in Arts will work in one of several
Schools. Of these there will be three and soon afterwards, we hope, four.
First, a School of European Studies. The student will do a modern language
and literature, and do it thoroughly . . . Secondly, there will be a School of
English Studies, similar in structure to the )rst. Thirdly, a School of Social
Studies, a modi)ed P.P.E . . . In science we shall have a three-year honours
course in which three subjects out of four must be taken: i.e., three out of
Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and Physics.68
He further explained,
We would like to see what can be done about teaching methods. It is possible
that, with this system of schools, we could have a fairly exiguous lecture
system, so that we would not o1er students lectures on every aspect of their
departmental courses. Perhaps we might o1er them broad lecture courses,
and then by seminars and tutorials give them the slant they want in their
particular )eld.69
Fulton was born in Dundee in #9&2, the son of Angus Robertson Fulton,
Professor of Professor of Engineering and Drawing and #9,9-/% the
interim Principal of University College, Dundee. He had attended
St Andrews in #9#9, as an undergraduate, and due to small classes, as an
Honours student he would have experienced something of the ‘democratic
intellect’ which in Scotland universities tended to aim for a general educa-
tion over a specialised one, and certainly not a classics-oriented Oxford
style structure.7: John Burnet, who taught Fulton, described the system at
St Andrews in #9#0, stating, ‘it is extremely desirable that the students of
the Humanities should know something of Science, and that the students

67 Norman Mackenzie, ‘Starting a New University’, Higher Education Quarterly #-, no. 2
(#9%#): #-#, doi:#&.####/j.#/%.-220,.#9%#.tb&&#0&.x.
68 Mackenzie, #-&. 69 Mackenzie, #-&.
7: George Elder Davie, The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the
Nineteenth Century, Third edition / edited by Murdo Macdonald., Edinburgh Classic
Editions (Edinburgh: University Press, #9%#), #&. As Fulton notes, ‘the Scottish university
tradition owes a great deal to the medieval German university. It was no part of that tradi-
tion to teach the undergraduate by the tutorial methods which have become associated with
Oxford and Cambridge. But when I was at St. Andrews at the end of the )rst war (I went
up when I had just become #0) the numbers in the Honours classes were very small, and
there was contact with the professor beyond what would normally have been expected in the
Scottish universities at any rate at that time’, see Fulton, ‘The Shape of Universities’, -&.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 273

of Science should know something of the Humanities’.7¹ In #92/ Fulton

moved to Oxford, reading Greats, and it was at Balliol he experienced in
full the Oxford tutorial system taught by distinguished scholars who
devoted themselves to their subjects and teaching. After )nishing his

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degree, he worked for ‘two years as a lecturer at the London School of
Economics (#92%–.), [and] he returned to Balliol in #92. as a fellow and
tutor in philosophy. In #9,-, when “modern Greats” (philosophy, politics,
and economics) had established itself, particularly in Balliol, the “philoso-
phy” in his title was changed to “politics” ’.7( He left Balliol in #9/0 and
was appointed Principal of the University College, Swansea, where
between #9/0–-9 he tried to adapt the university to be less homogenous,
recruiting from a wider geographical spread to create more social diversity.
His reforms, ‘not to universal acclaim,’ introduced a ‘liberal approach to
higher education . . . and remoulded the curriculum as a result’ and he ‘also
put in place plans to revolutionise campus life at the College’.7³ Whilst at
Swansea he served ‘two spells, in #9-2–/ and #9-.–9, as vice-chancellor of
the University of Wales’ and ‘encouraged university expansion and fur-
thered his interest in adult education, which had been stimulated in the
past by his mentoring by Lindsay’.73
Fulton used the metaphor of shape, or sometimes pattern, when think-
ing about the new university.74 Although Fulton does not tend to refer to
abstract geometric forms, such as the circle, triangle, rectangle, he did tend
to talk in a Platonic key when outlining the ‘shape’ of Sussex.76 For
example, Fulton argued for the merits of an abstract notion of the Oxford
tutorial system as a basis for Sussex’s approach to innovative teaching
methods, which became the 2–- person Sussex tutorial. He argued, this
‘made the [student] active, instead of passive: [they are] forced to show
[their] hand. It made [them] regular in his habits, because [their] work
could not be postponed to the end of term or of the year’.77 This was
because there was an ‘attempt to stop the 2ood of numbers turning

7¹ John Burnet, Higher Education and the War (London, MacMillan, #9#0), 220, http://
archive.org/details/highereducationw&&burnuoft. Fulton was taught at St Andrews under
Prof. John Burnet (Classics), Prof. Wallace Martin Lindsay (Classics), Prof. George F. Stout
(Philosophy and Psychology), and Prof. Alfred Edward Taylor (Moral Philosophy).
7( Briggs, ‘John Scott Fulton’.
7³ Briggs. See also, Swansea University, ‘John S Fulton - Swansea University’, John S Fulton,
2&2,, https://www.swansea.ac.uk/centenary2&2&/century-of-inspiring-people/js-fulton/
73 Briggs. 74 Fulton, ‘The Shape of Universities’.
76 Fulton, /%. Bradbury observed that ‘Vice Chancellors, all share in common a Platonic
ideal for a university. For one thing it should be big . . . There should be big sports grounds,
a science building designed by Basil Spence, and more and more students coming every
year’, see Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People Is Wrong (London: Secker & Warburg,
#90%), #0&.
77 Mackenzie, ‘Starting a New University’, #-&.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

274 History of Universities

university teaching into a conveyor-belt system on the American

model, where undergraduate teaching is now in a desperate crisis’.78
Fulton, ‘referred both to Scotland and to Classical Greats and Modern
Greats at Oxford’ when discussing the need to bridge general and

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specialised education, with Briggs noting the importance of Davie’s
work The Democratic Intellect which argued that ‘speciality need not be
inconsistent with unity of learning’.79 These early ideas are shown in an
early 1960 publication titled, The University College of Sussex: An Appeal,
which argued,
A new University has two obligations: on the one hand it must have due
respect for the long traditions of its sister universities and seek to emulate
their high academic standards; on the other, it has a duty, as a newcomer, to
try and illuminate some of the di5cult contemporary problems of higher
education . . . Among other problems, what is described as ‘over-specialisation’
has of late come under considerable criticism. If over-specialisation exists in
the educational system, the remedy is not to be found in discarding all the
virtues and advantages of a healthy measure of specialisation; but, rather, in
retaining the discipline which comes from specialisation while, at the same
time, broadening the base of specialised studies in such a way as to enlarge
the mind of the student.8:
One of the key decisions by John Fulton was to o1er in #9%& the Dean of
Social Studies and Professor of History to Asa Briggs, and later in #9%/
Pro-Vice Chancellor (Planning).8¹ Briggs, accepted the post literally as he
set sail to Australia to give a lecture titled The Map of Learning to the
Research Students’ Association of The Australian National University.8(
Briggs shared many of Fulton’s aspirations to excellence at the University
of Sussex, writing that ‘universities are only universities if they provide
access to the best’.8³ However, Briggs’s notion of a ‘new map of learning’
was more empirical, more historical and more bottom-up in its conceptu-
alisation. For Briggs, as for Fulton, teaching and research were to be of the
highest quality in the new university, as Briggs wrote prior to taking up his
appointment,

78 Mackenzie, #-&. 79 Briggs, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’, %..

8: University College of Sussex, ‘The University College of Sussex: An Appeal’ (#9%&),
SxUOS#/#/#/#-//, University of Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections
at The Keep.
8¹ Asa Briggs was elected the second Vice Chancellor of the University on 29 May
#9%% taking up the post in the #9%0 academic year.
8( Asa Briggs, The Map of Learning., Research Students’ Association. #st Annual Lecture,
#9%& (Canberra: Australian National University, #9%#), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/
Record/&&#0,-0#-.
8³ Briggs, 22.
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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 275

teaching and research are not substitutes for each other in a university but
two aspects of the advancement of learning. The pursuit of knowledge and
its communication to others are of equal importance in any institution
meriting the name of university.83

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Briggs mobilised a rather unusual set of sources for his idea of a new map
of learning. He drew on geographical metaphors, in2uenced by Francis
Bacon, the #0th century empiricist, the idea of personal knowledge drawn
from Michael Polanyi, the renowned physicist and social scientist, the
notion of two cultures from C. P. Snow, and the importance of bringing
together the general and the particular from F. M. Powicke, the medieval
historian, amongst others.84 He argued that universities had to ‘cross the
Snow line,’ so that ‘a more general degree with the same prestige as single
honours but with connections to related areas of knowledge and the world
of thought beyond, not as a substitute for specialization but as a prelimin-
ary to it’.86 Briggs was also highly critical of what he called ‘departmental-
ism’ and argued strongly for a new ‘school pattern for the university’ which
would avoid the insularity of the disciplinary system.87 Briggs noted that
Francis Bacon, ‘was writing in the light of the far-reaching changes in
the organisation of the “map of learning” in the )fteenth and sixteenth
centuries, changes to which historians have attached the phrase “the new
learning” ’.88 Briggs explained that universities often contained,
students and teachers in science and the humanities, literature and social sci-
ences all too often )gure as inhabitants of separate continents. A few boats pass
between them, fewer still on regular service; there are a number of distinguished
travellers and a diminishing number of visitors . . . their ideas of what happens
in more distant regions are usually imprecise, frequently prejudiced, and often
wrong. Occasionally joint ventures of discovery are made by outstanding
explorers within the universities who care little, if at all, for local allegiances.89
Sussex at its foundation was given four major schools of study, the School
of Social Studies, the School of European Studies, the School of English
and American Studies, and the School of Physical Sciences followed by the
School of African and Asian Studies in October 1964.9: For this new
university to function Briggs was concerned that academics were well-paid

83 Briggs, ,&.
84 Briggs, The Map of Learning.; Briggs, ‘A Founding Father Re2ects’, ,#9.
86 Harold Perkin, ‘Dream, Myth and Reality: New Universities in England, #9%&–#99&’,
Higher Education Quarterly /-, no. / (#99#): 29., doi:#&.####/j.#/%.-220,.#99#.tb&#-0/.x.
87 Briggs, ‘A Founding Father Re2ects’, ,2#.
88 Briggs, The Map of Learning., 0.
89 Briggs, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’, 0,.
9: Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity, 9. Queen Elizabeth the Second opened
the library on 13 November 1964. Additionally the Centre for Multi-Racial Studies
(CMRS) was also established at Sussex in 1964 led by Professor Fernando Henriques.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

276 History of Universities

in order to be able to focus properly on their university research and teach-

ing. Bacon, Briggs noted, had argued that ‘university teachers deserved
more pay and the cost of university equipment needed to be more gener-
ously subsidised by the government’ quoting Bacon that ‘as secretaries and

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spials of princes and states bring in bills for intelligence, so you must allow
the spials and intelligencers of nature to bring in their bills; or else you
shall be ill advertised’.9¹ For Sussex to attract the very best faculty and to
be at the cutting edge of research, Briggs argued that it was critical that it
treat its academic sta1 with the respect it deserved, both in terms of inclusion
in decision-making in shaping the university, but also in terms of directing
their research out into the world. He was keen to avoid the mistakes of the
Redbrick universities which with their hierarchical departmental struc-
tures tended to develop control mechanisms that disincentivised initiative
both by individuals and their departments.9(
Drawing on Polanyi, Briggs wrote, ‘there was the recognition that a
university education involves not merely the acceptance of information or
ideas, but a personal quest which, if entered upon with zest, continues far
beyond the three years of undergraduate study’.9³ He continued, ‘being
explorers ourselves in a new university, explorers with ample maps of other
universities but with none of our own, we wanted to make the students
into explorers also’.93 As Briggs explains, ‘sometimes indeed the decision
to create a new university is taken before adequate thought has been
devoted to essential facts, let alone values’.94 For Briggs, to redraw the new
maps of learning required that the explorers are able to break with con-
vention and be innovative.
It was on #% August #9%#, Fulton announced the Royal Charter of
Incorporation of the University of Sussex in The Times, in an article titled

9¹ Briggs, The Map of Learning., ..

9( see Michael Shattock, Managing Successful Universities (Berkshire: Society for Research
into Higher Education : Open University Press, 2&&,), #9, http://site.ebrary.com/
id/#&#0-2,%. It is interesting to note that at Senate on #& October #9%#, Sussex debated
whether faculty members should wear gowns when lecturing (it was agreed that they
should) and that the word ‘students’ should not be used, but rather that ‘the terms “under-
graduates” and “graduate students” are substituted’ as ‘students’ was seen as a term for
extramural education. At Senate ## December #9%2, it was also con)rmed that the practice
that students have to wear gowns for examinations would continue, see Ted Shields, ‘Senate
Minutes’ (#9%2), SxUOS#/#/2/20/,, University of Sussex Collection, University of Sussex
Special Collections at The Keep. Truscott, the pseudonym of Edgar Allison Peers, Professor
in Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool, was critical that Sussex and Keele debated
these type of relatively trivial decisions whilst having ‘constitutions . . . which leave everyone
guessing whether a university teacher is a member of a society or an employee in a hierar-
chy?’, see Bruce Truscot, ‘Academic Screwtape’, Nature #9/, no. /.29 (May #9%2): %#%–%#0,
doi:#&.#&,./#9/%#%a&.
9³ Briggs, ‘Drawing a New Map of Learning’, %%.
93 Briggs, %%. 94 Briggs, The Map of Learning., ##.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 277

‘Balliol by the Sea Faces its Future’.96 Sussex, he wrote, opened in October
#9%# to -2 students in the Arts (both female and male), and was based in
two Victorian houses on Preston Road, Brighton, with lectures in a nearby
church hall.97 Fulton outlined how the Sussex undergraduate multi-

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subject degree was to be modelled on Philosophy, Politics and Economics,
or Modern Greats, at Oxford and in the sciences through the combining
of )elds, such as Chemistry and Engineering as Chemical Engineering, or
Physics and Biology as Biophysics. As a consequence of this Sussex was to
have no departments, instead there were to be Schools, which by bringing
together multiple knowledges would meet Asa Briggs’s notion of
‘re-drawing the map of learning’.98 Fulton therefore argued,
For students to be asked to integrate their subjects is a challenge to a di5cult
task: for this among other reasons the university is committed to a tutorial
system in which the undergraduate learns by writing; and by submitting the
fruits of [their] writing to the rigorous, though friendly, criticism of [their]
teachers.99
Briggs writing in The New Statesman developed this line of thought,
explaining,
basic study throughout the three years will be through the tutorial. Lectures
will be ancillary and voluntary, but given a considered place within the sys-
tem. The )rst two terms, which )x the ‘image’ of the university in the mind
of the undergraduate (often, and to a still increasing extent, an undergradu-
ate with no family experience and little previous knowledge of universities),
will )rmly establish the central signi)cance of the tutorial system (guided
individual reading, one essay a week and regular encounters with a tutor).
During the second and particularly the third year, tutorials and lectures will
be augmented by seminars, some of which by present criteria would be
interdisciplinary.¹::
With these safeguards for excellence in teaching and learning given by the
tutorial system, Briggs argued that ‘it is just as important to decide what
not to teach as what to teach’.¹:¹ He stated that at Sussex ‘here is a kind of

96 John Fulton, ‘Balliol By The Sea Faces Its Future’, The Times, #9%#, The Times Digital
Archive. Briggs argued that Sussex ‘was sometimes called, though it never was, ‘Balliol by
the sea’, proved highly attractive to applicants’ and that it ‘came to symbolize the spirit of
the #9%&s’. Fulton, Briggs also noted, ‘inspired the institution rather than managed it, win-
ning friendship as well as loyalty’, see Briggs, ‘John Scott Fulton’. Briggs, of course, had been
appointed by Fulton as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Planning) at the university.
97 Gray, Making the Future, 9. 98 Fulton, ‘Balliol By The Sea Faces Its Future’.
99 Fulton, 9.
¹:: Asa Briggs, ‘Maps of Learning’, New Statesman, January #9%#, ,,., Periodicals
Archive Online.
¹:¹ Briggs, ,/&.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

278 History of Universities

university education which does not depend on premature specialisation,

but on curiosity, interest and the desire to probe and to relate’.¹:( For
Fulton, Sussex teaching was to be similar to ‘Modern Greats at Oxford . . . a
multi-subject Honours course in which three aspects of civilization–

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philosophy, politics and economics–are studied together. Here the unity is
to be found in their inter-relation and their in2uence upon one another’.¹:³
From this Fulton believed that the university would give ‘the gift of a new
perspective’ by encouraging the student to acquire the habit of mind to
‘learn to think independently and resourcefully’ catching ‘something of
the spirit’ of ‘quite another world from the daily practical one’ to ‘encour-
age them to free themselves from the partial, the prejudiced, the uncritical
view’.¹:3 Indeed, Daiches described Sussex as having a ‘curiously illogical
combination of establishment image and reputation for being new and
rebellious’.¹:4 Fittingly, the university motto chosen by John Fulton in
#9%#, from Psalm /%, verse #&, was ‘be still and know’.¹:6 Fulton noted
that it ‘seemed to sum up his view of undergraduate life, i.e. a three year
period away from the distractions of normal life; he felt it particularly apt
for education on the new green campus at Falmer’ and also ‘its relation
to Cartesian logic of doubt, etc.’.¹:7 Fulton made an explicit link to
Descartes method, where a sceptical approach to the search for truth has
to take place out of this world, to use scepticism to help in acquiring
knowledge. As Williams explains,

¹:( Briggs, ,/&. As was noted even as late of #99#, ‘Sussex made the two-student tutorial
the basis of teaching and has stuck to it in the more Socratic schools’, although sadly this is
no longer the case today, see Perkin, ‘Dream, Myth and Reality’, 299.
¹:³ Fulton, ‘The Shape of Universities’, -%. ¹:3 Fulton, %2.
¹:4 David Daiches, ‘One Day This Summer They Moved a Piece of Sussex History’,
Focus: The News Magazine of the University of Sussex, #9%9.
¹:6 Geo1 Lockwood, ‘University Motto’ (February #9.-), SxUOS#-#-#-#--0, University
of Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep; Geo1rey Victor
Whit)eld, The Transformation of an English University from the 1960’s: Fifty Years of Societal
and Religious Developments at the University of Sussex (Lexington, Kentucky: Emeth Press,
2&#,), %%. Briggs notes, ‘the motto of the University of Sussex of [Fulton’s] own devising
had been ‘Be still and know’, but to the end Fulton had little wish to be still. He was always
full of vitality’, see Briggs, ‘John Scott Fulton’. It was taken from Psalm /%:#&. It is interest-
ing that the motto has particular resonances with the critique of a sense of drift and a lack
of values in the university identi)ed by Moberly discussed above, see Moberly, Crisis in the
University. As to why Fulton cut half the full biblical verse, ‘he has been asked the question
about the omission of ‘that I am God’ before and has refused to answer’, see Lockwood,
‘University Motto’.
¹:7 Lockwood, ‘University Motto’. This is recorded in the University archives as a con-
versation with Fulton noted in a University of Sussex memorandum dated / Feb #9.-, see
Lockwood. The document notes that Fulton explained, ‘it was his decision to have [the
motto] in the native language; others would have preferred Latin’ and that ‘he decided if
English it had to be from the Bible or Shakespeare, and he chose the Bible’ and that ‘walking
on the Scottish hills he discussed the issue with friends, ‘Be Still and Know’ came to mind,
and he stuck with it for a variety of reasons’, see Lockwood.
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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 279

Descartes conceived of a project that would be purely the search for truth,
and would be unconstrained by any other objectives at all. Because it tem-
porarily lays aside the demands of practical rationality, it has to be detached
from practice; and because it is concerned with truth and nothing else, it has
to raise its requirements to the highest conceivable level, and demand noth-

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ing less than absolute certainty.¹:8
For Fulton, education starts using a methodical sceptical approach that
questions every step in our thinking, a refusal to take things for granted.¹:9
But Sussex was not just to be a teaching university, research was also key to
its idea and ethos.¹¹: As Blin-Stoye writes, ‘those of us responsible for
bringing the university into being were always absolutely clear (unlike
some in high places today) that a high level of research and scholarship
contribute so much to the general ethos of a university, but also because,
without them, teaching at a university level can become lifeless, uninspired
and dated’.¹¹¹ Briggs agreed, ‘the sense of the University of Sussex [was] as
a research university (with the research, when possible, linked to teach-
ing), where institutes, [and] centres . . . would concern themselves with
major national and international themes, where appropriate, in an inter-
disciplinary way’.¹¹( Interestingly, most of the changes that took place
between #9%#–#9%0 were not in2uenced by students and the innovation in
the university was led by faculty, this included the success of the Institute
of Development Studies being located at Sussex in #9%-, against Oxford’s
attempt to lay claim to it, and the foundation of SPRU in #9%%.¹¹³

¹:8 Bernard Williams, ‘Introductory Essay’, in Meditations on First Philosophy with

Selections from the Objections and Replies, ed. John Cottingham. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2&&,), %.
¹:9 The theological basis of Descartes method is also, I believe, important in accounting
for Fulton’s belief in the necessity of a moral compass for a university.
¹¹: To ensure academic quality it was noted in Council Minutes of . Dec #9%# that an
Academic Advisory Council was appointed by the Privy Council to Sussex including, Sir
Isaiah Berlin, Sir James Du1, Dr. R. Holroyd, Prof. P.B. Medawar, and Prof. N.F. Mott, see
Ted Shields, ‘COUNCIL II: Council Minutes’ (#9%#), SxUoS#/#/2/,#/-/#, University of
Sussex Collection, University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep.
¹¹¹ Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity, xv.
¹¹( Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, #2. As Perkin noted, ‘In the UFC research rankings in #9.9, )ve
of [the Plate Glass Universiites] were placed in the top twenty: Warwick was -th out of --
institutions, behind only Cambridge, Imperial College, Oxford, and University College
London; York was 9th, Essex and Sussex ##th and #2th, Lancaster #0th, East Anglia was
22nd and Kent ,.th’ see Perkin, ‘Dream, Myth and Reality’, ,&..
¹¹³ Martin Trow joined Sussex in #9%- and made this observation which rings true at
Sussex till this day, ‘one strong impression is that the faculty at Brighton spend a quite pro-
digious amount of time meeting with one another on academic business. Besides the many
regular committees and conferences, the sta1 seems always to meeting about some question
or other . . . my )rst thought at Brighton was ‘My God, how does the faculty manage to get
any work done?’ see Martin Trow, ‘Notes From The Notebook Of An Educational
Anthropologist’, Bulletin #&/,/#9%-, no. 22 (#9%-): #/–#-.
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280 History of Universities

Fulton stood down as Vice Chancellor in #9%0. Sussex existed up to this

point in what I earlier referred to as the Robbins parenthesis, but this paren-
thesis was soon to close. Change was already coming as higher education
policy swung away from Robbins. In #9%- a sense of the coming shift was

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signalled by the so-called ‘Woolwich speech’ speech given by Antony
Crosland and the subsequent publication of Toby Weaver’s white paper,
‘A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges,’ which established a binary
system in British higher education. Crossland argued that
there was a public sector of higher education, with distinctive principles and
purposes, alongside the universities. If the universities could be said to be
in an ‘autonomous’ tradition, the public-sector colleges were in a ‘service’
tradition, which was valuable in itself and should not be subsumed by the
other.¹¹3
In #9%0, Asa Briggs prepared to take over as Vice Chancellor of the univer-
sity. A shift in higher education policy was now well under way within
government. As a consequence, the University Grants Committee agreed
a grant to Sussex ‘considerably less than we had hoped, and in the light of
our budget we had to make substantial changes to the academic plans
which we had drawn up, we believed, not unrealistically’.¹¹4 Briggs
observed that there was unlikely to be any further large-scale develop-
ments until after #902 based on the funding plans of the UGC, and con-
sequently Sussex would need to seek development funds from elsewhere.
As a result, Fulton (then in the )nal months of his Vice Chancellorship)
and Briggs commissioned a McKinsey report in the government, organisa-
tion and administrative methods of Sussex. The result was a proposal for
‘streamlining of committees, an increase in participation, a clearer de)nition
of administrative responsibilities, greater devolution, a strengthening of
the planning process and an improved system of internal communication’.¹¹6
The e1ect of this was that the administrative centre was removed from
most academic matters, including academic planning. Interestingly, up
until this point students had not been much involved with university mat-
ters, but student attitudes were beginning to shift, especially following
student protests in #9%.. One of the more famous of these was when red
paint was thrown over Robert Beers, spokesperson for the US embassy,
who talked at Sussex about the Vietnam War, by self-described anarchists

¹¹3 Tyrrell Burgess, ‘Sir Toby Weaver’, The Guardian, June 2&&#, sec. Education, https://
www.theguardian.com/news/2&&#/jun/#,/guardianobituaries.highereducation.
¹¹4 Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity, #-.
¹¹6 Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, #%.
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A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 281

Sean Linehan and Merfyn Jones.¹¹7 But Sussex in actuality was less radical
in political matters in the late #9%&s than it appeared either in the media,
or in nostalgic accounts of the university, as Crouch argued,
disciplinary action was taken against the individuals concerned with, appar-

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ently, the approval of the student body. This was the only major incident of
student disruption at Sussex, which had an elaborate system of disciplinary
procedure involving proctors (youthful members of academic sta1) and
students, with a clear and explicit structure of appeals . . . in this way
discipline seems to have a di1erent image at Sussex than in less fortunate
institutions, where it still appears as a remote and magisterial authority.¹¹8
After #9%0, with Fulton no longer at the helm, Sussex’s identity as ‘Balliol-
by-the-Sea’ was waning, as the ‘original Oxbridge trappings . . . dwindled
in signi)cance. Gowns . . . disappeared, and formal leave-taking [was]
vanishing. Proctorial authority [was] not the despotism tempered by expe-
diency of the Oxford model but something far more limited’.¹¹9 Whit)eld
wrote in 2&#, that ‘in some quarters, the University of Sussex was some-
times expected to be akin to “Balliol by the Sea” but it came well below
such inappropriate expectations’.¹(: However, according to Belo1, the
commitment to small-group teaching that was ‘a true echo of the Oxford
ideology’ remained. The Sussex philosophy stressed ‘the interdependence
rather than the independence of traditional subjects . . . the notion of the
school rather than the department as the basic academic institution’ as the
organisational re2ection of the underlying philosophy.¹(¹ The tutorial
system which gave greater concentration at the start of the undergraduate
degree strengthened the weaknesses apparent in this interdisciplinarity.
But as the funding environment began to tighten it became inevitable that
Sussex’s self-identity as an experimental laboratory for university educa-
tion would become more aligned with the broader notion of the other
‘Plateglass Universities’, a term that Belo1 introduced in #9%..¹(( Sussex

¹¹7 Merfyn Jones later became Vice Chancellor of the University of Bangor from 2&&/
to 2&#&.
¹¹8 Colin Crouch, The Student Revolt (Bodley Head, #90&), #&&.
¹¹9 Michael Belo1, The Plateglass Universities (Secker, #9%.), .2.
¹(: Whit)eld, The Transformation of an English University from the 1960’s, 2,.
¹(¹ Belo1, The Plateglass Universities, .,. The notion of the School was key to the way in
which Sussex understood itself. Professor Hugh F. Kearney, writing in #9%/, re2ected in the
University magazine, Bulletin, that ‘the original idea behind the School should be developed
so as to make it a reality. No one at Sussex regrets the passing of the department with all its
narrow loyalties . . . this is the point at which the Schools have their own contribution to
make. I believe that each School should work as far as possible as an independent unit, on
the analogy, mutatis mutandis, of an Oxford college’ see Hugh Francis Kearney, ‘When Is a
School Not a School?’, University of Sussex Bulletin, #9%/.
¹(( As Belo1 quoted of an academic from another university, ‘if Sussex had not existed,
it would not have been necessary to invent it’ see Belo1, The Plateglass Universities, .#.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

282 History of Universities

was changing due to pressures from its funding body, the UGC, faculty
and student demands, and a new regime under Asa Briggs.¹(³ Indeed, as it
matured it began to look more like its sister universities created in the
#9%&s, and less as a radical experimental lab for new academic ideas. But

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the questions posed by Moberly and others remained vital, for as John
Fulton remarked, looking back on the history of the University of Sussex
in #9.%, it remained important to ask: who are ‘the keepers of the univer-
sity’s conscience?’¹(3 Sussex’s guiding vision, its idea of a university,
remained important throughout this period.
Sussex was concerned with the ability to combine the particular and the
general, both in research and teaching, to create new ways of situating
specialisms in contexts through interdisciplinary approaches. Sussex
o1ered, not the )nal map of knowledge, but rather the institutional con-
text within which the practice of drawing and redrawing these ‘maps of
learning’ were made possible. Sussex could be said, therefore, to have had
a compass that gave a sense of the general direction for academics in
research and teaching. But it also had a strong sense of identity which
translated into everything the University did. These freedoms in research
and teaching that Fulton and Briggs had created attracted the best aca-
demic researchers and students to Sussex and it soon overtook many of the
civic universities in terms of research excellence. This legacy further
resulted in excellent research outcomes when a research assessment exer-
cise was introduced from #9.%-2&&# (later called the REF). Sussex was
rated in the top #- universities for research in the UK during this period.¹(4
Donald Winch, who came to Sussex in #9%2 and was Professor of the
History of Economics, spoke for many when he explained, ‘those of us

¹(³ In #9%0 Sussex was a remarkably popular choice for applicants to study. For example
in #9%0–%. “the university received #,,%,2 applications for the 9&. places which were avail-
able”. Cox further claimed a “marked tendency for Sussex to )gure as a very strong alterna-
tive institution for those who were unable to secure places at Oxford or Cambridge” see
Edwin H. Cox, ‘How Admisions Cope with the Demand for Places’, Focus: The News
Magazine of the University of Sussex, #9%9.
¹(3 Blin-Stoyle and Ivey, The Sussex Opportunity, 2&0.
¹(4 Shattock, Managing Successful Universities, %. Sussex had an average ranking of #2
from #9.%–2&&#. As noted in 2&&,, by Shattock, ‘Sussex seem to be slipping down the
rankings and must be hoping to recover their positions next time’ see Shattock, 0. It has
since dropped to ,, in the 2&2# REF tables, see Jack Grove, ‘REF 2&2#: Quality Ratings Hit
New High in Expanded Assessment’, Times Higher Education (THE), May 2&22, https://
www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ref-2&2#-research-excellence-framework-results-
announced. As Shattock noted, ‘universities performing at the highest levels in research
success is paralleled by success in student related measures, including teaching, see Shattock,
Managing Successful Universities, 9. Although it should be noted that Sussex was the only
university in this set to have poor league table position in teaching, which may be a hango-
ver of the inability of the original School system to meet new demands after #9.% from
students for departmental support and teaching, see Shattock, #&.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 23/11/24, SPi

A History of the Concept of the University of Sussex 283

who retain the privilege of teaching . . . at Sussex will, therefore, as in the

past, have to stand by a calling that avoids the over-responsiveness to exter-
nal interests. I can think of no better way of doing this than to cultivate, in
due measure, those more fundamental issues which are nobody’s business,

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if not our own’.¹(6
School of Media, Arts and Humanities,
University of Sussex,
Falmer,
East Sussex, BN19RH.
This article was made possible by funding from The British Academy refer-
ence MD#%&&-2. The author would also like to thank the Rector and
Fellows of Lincoln College for the kind invitation to become a member of
the College Senior Common Room during 2&#0 whilst researching the
project.

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