Alan Finlayson

¶¶ Hello and welcome to Culture Power Politics, a podcast about culture, power and politics.

I'm Jeremy Gilbert and I'm here with fan favourite Alan Finlayson.

All right, Jeremy, I never get tired of hearing you say that.

No, I don't get tired of saying it, and everybody likes it.

Hello, my name's David Runciman, and this is Past, Present, The History of Ideas podcast.

Today, it is the second part of my conversation with the political theorist, Alan Finlayson, about what's happened to higher education in Britain since the Second World War.

And in this episode, we're taking the story from the Thatcher years up to the present, particularly talking about what happened under Tony Blair and New Labour, education, education, education.

but also the crisis of universities today.

I'm Jeremy Gilbert.

I'm here with fan favourite Alan Finlayson.

Still fan favourite.

That's nice

Hello, my name's David Runciman, and this is Past, Present, Future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today in our series about whether universities can survive what the 21st century has coming for them, I'm talking to the political theorist Alan Finlayson about what's happened to higher education in Britain since the Second World War.

This is a story of massive expansion, expansion of the number of universities, of the number of students, the range of what they do.

We're talking about why it happened, the political thinking behind it, what it was expected to achieve, what it has produced in practice.

And they are wanting or hoping for some kind of experience of self-transformation, shall we call it that, whatever that might mean, personal or social experience.

So despite all these challenges, the university as that sort of space remains quite resilient, I think, across that period.

reminder that this podcast has a free fortnightly newsletter which contains all sorts of clips and links related to our episodes and every fortnight my thoughts on something the most recent one is out now it's my thoughts on ai and sherlock holmes if you'd like to get it every fortnight all you have to do is sign up now either go to our website ppfideas.com or click on the link in the show description Next time in this series, part two of my conversation with Alan Finlayson.

And we're going to take the story from the Thatcher years through to the present.

Next time in this series, a different kind of story and a different kind of history.

I'm going to be talking to the political theorist Alan Finlayson about the history of British universities since the Second World War.

What explains the political decisions that have been made about university education and what have their consequences been? That's next time.

This has been Past, Present, Future.