JEAN BOCOCK, LEWIS BASTON, PETER SCOTT and DAVID SMITH AMERICAN INFLUENCE ON BRITISH HIGHER EDUCATION: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSITY EXPANSION, 1945–1963 ABSTRACT. The increased support of science and technology were fundamental factors in the expansion of university education in post-war Britain. American technical assist- ance to Western Europe, exemplified by the Marshall Plan, also focused upon the role of applied science and technology as a means of boosting productivity and competitiveness. This common concern for science and technology led Britain to consider the adoption of American models, specifically a British version of MIT, in the search for an effective higher education policy for applied science and technology. However, this paper argues that, whilst America offered important models for change, British policies were ultimately shaped by British traditions. I NTRODUCTION The post-war period in Britain and Europe was one of extensive recon- struction and readjustment. The dominant economic position of the United States triggered ambivalent reactions. America offered a model of economic growth and a promise of material prosperity. Simultaneously, it posed the threat of ‘Americanization’, and penetration by American institutions, values and artefacts. Many saw America becoming ‘a huge challenging empire, wilful, disregarding Britain, criticising Britain, lording it over Britain, and claiming to lord it over everyone, everywhere’. 1 The election of the post-war Labour government and the economic crises of the late 1940s accentuated such tensions. The announcement of the Marshall Plan, with its aspirations of aiding economic stability in Western Europe, although widely welcomed, also enhanced fears of ‘dollar domination’. 2 The process of Americanization has been studied in many contexts, 3 but few have analysed America’s influence on British higher education in 1 Edward Shils, ‘The Intellectuals: Great Britain’, Encounter, IV (4), (1955), 5–17. 2 See the account in Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 3 See Volker Berghahn, The Americanisation of West German Industry (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1986). Also Jonathan Zeitlin and Gary Herrigel (eds.), Americanisa- Minerva 41: 327–346, 2003. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.