ERIC - EJ1005560 - Efficiency and Counter-Revolution: Connecting University and Civil Service Reform in the 1850s, History of Education, 2013 Notes FAQ Contact Us Collection Thesaurus Advanced Search Tips Peer reviewed only Full text available on ERIC Collection Thesaurus Browse Thesaurus Include Synonyms Include Dead terms Peer reviewed Direct link ERIC Number: EJ1005560 Record Type: Journal Publication Date: 2013 Pages: 22 Abstractor: As Provided ISBN: N/A ISSN: ISSN-0046-760X EISSN: N/A Available Date: N/A Efficiency and Counter-Revolution: Connecting University and Civil Service Reform in the 1850s Ellis, Heather History of Education , v42 n1 p23-44 2013 Historians have often recognised important links between the processes of university and civil service reform in mid-nineteenth-century England. Yet such connections are usually seen as forming part of a wider project of modernising reform with any conservative or counter-revolutionary aims largely discounted. However, as this article suggests, the decision to tie success in the new examinations to a career at the ancient English universities was not designed chiefly to recruit the most efficient people (as the report itself claims) or to provide new employment opportunities for Oxbridge graduates. Rather, the reformers sought to take advantage of the socialising function of the universities, to ensure the recruitment of men of sterling moral character, reliable and loyal, into a civil service increasingly called upon to serve as a bulwark of the state at a time of social and political upheaval. (Contains 100 footnotes.) Descriptors: Foreign Countries , Employment Opportunities , Educational History , Historians , State Programs , Higher Education , Educational Change , Socialization , Moral Values , Males , Student Recruitment , Social Change , Graduates , Government Employees Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106.