Modern British universities have always required you to 'read' a particular subject. The major change after WWII was to make them available to more people by changing the funding model rather than the educational system they provided.

The move to vocational courses for things outside the obvious (such as medicine) is a more recent phenonemon, in part bought on by large numbers of people going to university as it is the 'done thing' rather than by a desire to be educated, and in part by a return to a funding system requiring the students to pay for the education and wanting something tangible at the end of it (a job).