| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The now natural ideal of defining higher education through its societal utility is a relatively recent historical formation, and in the case of South Asia, its construction is entangled with the colonial history of the institutionalisation of modern higher education in the nineteenth century. Drawing on Robert Young's history of the Bentham-inspired 'chrestomathic' University of London, this article reviews the shifting construction of practicality in British Indian higher education policy in the formative period between 1835 and 1904. The article underlines the continuities and ruptures over time in the policy rhetoric of utility as a normative ideal and points out some implications for understanding colonialism
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