An audit of private colleges in Malaysia has unearthed serious quality issues, with only one in three colleges evaluated doing well in a quality assurance process that could be used by the government to approve or deny them licenses to recruit international students.
A burning question for developing countries is whether low quality private higher education is better than none at all, in circumstances where public systems cannot meet soaring student demand. Brazil decided it was and set about rapidly expanding its higher education system, including by opening it to private institutions. Today the country has one of the largest private sectors in the world and it enrols a staggering 75% of all post-secondary students.
Rising demand for post-secondary education, lack of government investment in the sector and the deteriorating quality of many public universities has led to an increase in private players in Indian higher education. But the regulation of private institutions has failed to keep up with their rapid growth, leading to concerns about quality and social equity.
For-profit colleges and universities represent the fastest-growing but also most controversial sector of private higher education in the United States. Universities like Phoenix, DeVry and Kaplan have helped turn the for-profit sector into a massive revenue generator and the engine for higher education growth. From 1998 to 2008, for-profit enrolment grew by 225%.
Recent years have witnessed a boom in private education opportunities across the Central American isthmus. To some, it seems that private entities cannot open classrooms fast enough. Whereas 30 years ago there were virtually no private universities, today there are more than 151 and every year more emerge.
The common characteristic of private universities in Central and Eastern Europe is that none of them existed 20 years ago. The 'private revolution' in this part of the world started after the dissolution of the Soviet block and the fall of communism in 1989. The ossified structures of centrally managed higher education systems were unable to react to the new educational needs of emerging market economies.
The emergence and growth of private higher education in Poland has been widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements of the country's transformation in the 1990s. Now, however, the sector is endangered - not only due to great demographic pressure, but also to unfair treatment of private institutions by the state.
Critics of private post-secondary education often argue that foreign universities in developing nations are commercial and profit-hungry. But these debates ring hollow in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of private providers are religiously-oriented with non-profit business models. Religious institutions are the fastest growing type of post-secondary institution in almost every nation north of South Africa and south of the Sahara.
Despite the efforts of some of the world's largest foreign private universities to set up shop in Australia, none have yet succeeded in making a profit from selling higher education - or even attracting significant numbers of students.
According to the most recent report of Accredibase, the UK-based background screening company Verifile Limited, there was a staggering 48% increase in the number of known degree or diploma mills operating worldwide last year. It identified more than 2,500 bogus institutions across all regions, but primarily in North America and Europe.
Surging demand for higher education ought to have given Kenya a good reason to clean up its universities. But as the number of private and public universities has grown over the past seven years, from 17 to 24 private and five to seven public institutions, so have concerns over the quality of learning.
A decade after Monash University in Melbourne became the first foreign university to gain registration as a private higher education institution in South Africa, its ambitious goal of establishing a profitable campus in Johannesburg has still to be achieved. Meanwhile the university has changed its approach, switching focus from being 'for-profit' to 'public purpose'.
Surprisingly, very few appear to have found serious contradictions in the approach of the eleventh plan, which aimed at inclusive growth but through giving the private sector an enhanced role.
Most of the post-secondary academic community-industry appears to ignore fundamental economic realities. Except for the elite institutions at the top of the league tables, the vast majority must compete in the market for students. Each institution's student enrolment, directly or in varying indirect degrees, provides the requisite revenue to cover current and projected costs.
Despite dramatic growth since the 1990s in the number of private institutions, which make up about 45% of all Arab universities and have a market size of US$1.2 billion in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates alone, these institutions continue to have little impact on the development of higher education systems in the Arab world.
Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.
The fate of hundreds, possibly thousands, of final-year students at private universities across Ghana hangs in the balance because they may not graduate, after the National Accreditation Board revealed that they were admitted without the requisite qualifications. The board suggested that some private universities have lowered entry requirements to bolster their numbers.
The only for-profit institution in Britain authorized to offer higher-education degrees is in talks with several public universities about managing the business side of their operations, according to the Guardian. The company, BPP, “has launched an aggressive expansion plan to jointly run at least 10 of its publicly funded counterparts,” the paper reports.
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