During the last two centuries or so, Western intellectuals have experienced a considerable rise in status and employment. A research fellow today normally occupies a more enviable position than the average author in the early eighteenth century, who commonly had to fawn on an aristocratic patron for his daily bread. From the second part of the eighteenth century the market for writers and teachers vastly expanded. The miseries once experienced by ill-paid scribblers in “Grub Street” in early Georgian London became a matter of legend. Education has now become one of the world's major growth industries.

In Great Britain—despite the country's economic difficulties—the annual rate of growth of educational expenditure has consistently exceeded the average annual growth of the Gross National Product.