The Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) was a degree awarding authority in the United Kingdom from 1965 until 1992. Qualifications included diplomas, bachelors, masters and PhD research degrees. The CNAA awarded academic degrees at polytechnics, Central Institutions and other non-university institutions such as Colleges of Higher Education until they were awarded university status. When the CNAA was wound up the British Government asked the Open University to continue the work of awarding degrees in non-university institutions. Additionally, the university has responsibility for CNAA records.
The CNAA, through its many subject panels, oversaw the degree awarding powers of polytechnics. Above all the CNAA saw itself as preserving a comparability with degree level awards in universities, a feature which can be seen as having both positive and negative aspects: positive in that it preserved a formal ‘parity of esteem’ between the awards of the two parts of the binary system (e.g. retaining the common currency of the undergraduate degree for entry to postgraduate study); but negative, in the eyes of some (e.g. Pratt, 1997), in that it encouraged an ‘academicism’ in the new sector and slowed an acceptance of the transformations required finally to break the boundaries of the old ‘elite’ system. In the event, the polytechnics were associated with many innovations, including, women’s studies, the academic study of communications and media, sandwich degrees, the rise of business studies, and not least, were much more responsive than older institutions in provision for the admission of non-standard students.
Famous quotes containing the words council for, council, national and/or academic:
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)
“Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
—Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)
“The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Being in a family is like being in a play. Each birth order position is like a different part in a play, with distinct and separate characteristics for each part. Therefore, if one sibling has already filled a part, such as the good child, other siblings may feel they have to find other parts to play, such as rebellious child, academic child, athletic child, social child, and so on.”
—Jane Nelson (20th century)