Before the Second World War, only about 20% of the population had any secondary education or only a few percent went to university; today secondary education has long been universal and 50% go to higher education. How and why did we get here from there? Peter Mandler talks about his new book The Crisis of the Meritocracy and explains why Britain, like most other modern societies, has needed to educate ever larger proportions of its citizenry to ever high levels.

Speaker: Professor Peter Mandler FBA, Professor of Modern Cultural History, University of Cambridge; Bailey Lecturer in History, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge

Transcript: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/podcasts/10-minute-talks-the-crisis-of-the-meritocracy-why-britain-has-needed-more-and-more-education/