This paper investigates the impact of the changing Higher Education environment, since the Dearing Report (NCIHE, 1997), on the purposes of United Kingdom (UK) universities. It seeks to explore whether there has been any significant change in the last eleven years. Massification of the UK Higher Education system from the latter part of the twentieth century has led to a greater diversity of students in terms of age, ethnicity and socio-economic background (Scott, 1998; Gordon, 2002). It has also raised the question of whether all universities and their degrees are the same or is there a hierarchy in terms of status (Brennan et al., 1999)? Barnett (1999) notes that a comparison the two major Higher Education reports illustrates very clearly the changing purpose of the university. He says, ‘Robbins (1963) conveys a sense of higher education somewhat external to the wider society (but) for Dearing, on the other hand, higher education should be much more integrated with the wider society, especially the economy, than it has been (p. 296).’ Barnett argues that Dearing was reflecting that the wider society and universities were interpenetrating each other. Bleiklie & Powell (2005) use the term ‘academic capitalism’ to describe present-day universities that are increasingly behaving in the same way as commercial organisations by, for example, marketing their intellectual property through ‘spin-offs’ and ‘spin-outs’ and selling it in the market place. Barnett (2003) observes that ‘ … the autonomies that the university has enjoyed for eight hundred years are being reduced as it becomes interconnected with the wider society both nationally and globally (p.2).’ Mission statements are the major means by which universities state their principal aims and an analysis of their current statements will be undertaken to identify UK universities key stated purposes. The work of Davies and Glaister (1996) will be used as a framework for the analysis. They identified twelve categories which include an emphasis on teaching, research, vocation, individual development, excellence or specialisation. Their findings from 1996 will be compared with the 2008 research recorded in this paper in order to identify the changes in purpose during this period.

There will be two stages. Firstly, there will be content and word analysis of the mission statements of all UK universities. Then there will be semi-structured interviews with a sample comprising a member of senior staff in twenty of these universities.

It is expected that there will be significant changes in the stated purposes of UK universities when comparing their pre- and post-Dearing mission statements. There is now likely to be a greater emphasis on skills and vocational education.