Youth Culture in Great Britain: The Effect of the Rapidly Growing Universities 1963-1968

Emerging Scholar Winner 2019: This essay focuses on the growth of higher education in Great Britain during the 1960s, specifically, the effect of the Robbins Report on the growth of the universities. The purpose of this essay is to create a correlation between the new universities in Britain and the height of youth culture in the sixties to the growing political activism and involvement of young people in Britain. The research includes what was brought to higher education by the Robbins Report, what the pop cultures and counter-cultures of the time in Britain looked like, and how youth people thrived in this culture and created a political culture that was used for activism of rights, further reflected upon in the essay. The essay, which expresses multiple opinions of historians about whether there is a correlation between new universities and youth cultures, further delves into the opportunity of new curriculum, new opportunity for women, and further expanses on youth cultures to include a sexual counter-culture and a movement of music, which helped show the difference between higher education and youth culture. The use of the differences of the two factors helps create a correlation between the mixture of university life and youth culture, that hence created a politicization of young people in Great Britain. This new political youth, driven by the new universities and sixties culture created political activism that was seen in the sixties British youth