This history of the "polytechnic experiment" covers the period from the establishment of a binary British higher education policy in the mid-1960s to the passage in 1992 of the Further and Higher Education Act, which abolished the binary policy and the polytechnic sector, thus enabling the polytechnics in England and Wales to acquire the title of university and award their own degrees. During this period over 50 existing technical and other colleges were combined into 30 institutions in a nonuniversity, "public" sector in order to address the increasing need for vocational, professional, and industrial-based courses that could not be met by the universities. The polytechnics, which had more than 150,000 students by 1973, were unlike the universities; they had more undergraduate than graduate students, more part-time students, and more "sandwich" students (who alternate between jobs and courses). Chapters discuss the genesis of the polytechnic policy, present charts and data tables on student demographics, discuss the range of courses, styles of teaching, degrees awarded, faculty characteristics, funding, governance and management, and evaluates and successes and failures of the polytechnic concept. (Contains approximately 600 references.) (BF)