According to a report from a policy thinktank, private higher education colleges in the UK face being “devastated” by last year’s government clampdown on overseas students.
David Cameron and Nick Clegg are to abandon radical plans to reform Britain’s university system that would have seen more private firms competing to educate students, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
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.
Coalition plans to expand the number of private universities risks leading to higher drop out rates and lower academic standards, according to a powerful lobby of almost 500 professors.
Coalition government plans to expand the number of private universities in the UK risks leading to higher dropout rates and lower academic standards, according to a powerful lobby of almost 500 professors, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph. It is claimed that giving profit-making companies access to state funding will create a system in which institutions pursue short-term financial gains at the expense of a decent education.
The British government's apparent move to suspend the higher education bill will not automatically derail the expansion of private provision, according to government critics and leading private institutions.
The UK government is poised to smooth the passage for private investment in higher education, creating an opportunity for private equity investors to make a mark on the sector
Only one message will have reached most of the public from Sir Andrew Foster's report on further education: that a significant (but unspecified) proportion of colleges are failing and should be taken over by private providers. Not surprisingly for a 113-page assessment of an entire sector, the real verdict is much more complex and generally more sympathetic to the colleges. Sir Andrew blames successive governments for giving further education too wide a brief, confusing employers and students while spreading resources too thinly. He suggests that higher education courses are among the distractions, and he advocates a model closer to the American community college. Sir Andrew Foster
The British government will abandon plans to make it easier for private higher-education institutions, including for-profit American companies, to operate in the country, reports The Telegraph.
The establishment of a new private liberal-arts college in London, which was announced to widespread media coverage on Sunday, appears to have already hit several significant hurdles. A.C. Grayling, a well-known philosopher and the driving force behind the New College of the Humanities, had said in an introduction to the institution posted on its Web site that its students would have access to many resources at the University of London, including its libraries. However, in a statement, the University of London said that there was “no formal agreement between the University of London and the NCH concerning academic matters” and that there was not yet any agreement “regarding access to the Senate House Libraries by NCH students.”
A physician plans to open what will become Britain's first privately financed medical school since the 19th century, promising to train doctors in about half the time it takes at one of the nation'...
The head of Britain's first for-profit university college was paid £738,000 ($1,177,000) in one year, while the co-chief executive officer of the firm’s U.S. owner has a long-term pay deal valued at £15.8 million ($25.2 million).
High fees plus the prohibition of any part-time working by international students at private colleges have ensured the dramatic contraction of the industry, says Geoffrey Alderman
As private higher education makes inroads in Britain, lawmakers should look to the United States for lessons on shaping how the industry will grow and evolve, a new report says.
One of Britain's best-known public intellectuals took higher-education observers by surprise on Sunday with the announcement that he is spearheading the establishment of what would be an unprecedented kind of institution in Britain—a private, for-profit liberal-arts college that would rival elite institutions such as the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
But today they are facing two imminent threats to their near-monopoly of higher education. The first is the expansion of educational providers that exist solely on private support. The second comes from the small but growing efforts of for-profit universities, heavily influenced by commercial education ventures in the United States.
AC Grayling argued that students' comments on Facebook and Twitter - and how their degrees were accepted in the workplace - would help regulate private colleges such as the New College of the Humanities, which he set up.
Buckingham is the UK's only officially independent university, which sets its own fees, and there are calls for more like it. The rise in the university tuition fee cap across England has led to huge protests, and yet some top universities want it to be even higher.
Singapore and the United Kingdom will work together to raise standards in private education in both countries. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to do so was signed on Friday by the Council for Private Education (CPE) Singapore and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) United Kingdom.
The government is being urged to prevent universities being bought by private equity firms after the College of Law, a charity that provides teaches law courses in London and six other cities across England, was sold to a private equity firm for £200m.
Figures show that leading Russell Group universities spent £382 million (US$613 million) on the highest paid academics and managers last year – twice as much as in 2003-04. It also emerged that the proportion of university spending on top staff – those paid at least £100,000 a year – increased from just 1.8% to 3.8%, writes Graeme Paton for The Telegraph.
This (unnamed) college demonstrates the 'dark side' of the private sector in higher education. Things can go wrong, and when they do this can be very bad - particularly for the students. This is not to say that the private sector in higher education is all like this. It can be done well, and a private alternative to publicly funded universities and colleges adds a great deal to the sector. As in the US and many other countries, private colleges can enrich the student and academic experience for all, giving diversity and real alternatives.
The dust seems to be settling on many of the reforms announced in last year's HE white paper but one topic still seems to get backs up: the perceived privatisation of HE and the growing number of private institutions.
Ministers have introduced a system of "due diligence checks" for private higher education providers, it has emerged, as new figures show that the number of their students accessing state-funded loans has nearly doubled in a year.
A scheme to fund more student places at private universities is under fire after the Universities minister, David Willetts, admitted that no checks are made on whether undergraduates complete their course.
The document also confirms that plans for further education colleges and private institutions to be subject to tight controls on the number of students – funded through Government-backed loans – that each one can recruit.
Private higher education providers in Britain are to compete directly with public universities for undergraduate places for the first time after the British government announced that it aimed to bring them under the same controls on the number of students accessing public loans, and the same quality assurance regime, as the rest of the sector.
The government has adopted a policy of not discriminating between public, for-profit and voluntary providers of many public services. Is this the right way to go for higher education?
As one of the few cops walking the beat of global higher education, Britain’s Quality Assurance Agency does not limit its audits to schools inside Britain. Adjustment, rather than punishment, is the aim of the Q.A.A. Before the agency issues even a “limited confidence” judgment, the university being audited will typically be given the opportunity to appeal the decision. Out of 38 degree-awarding institutions audited last year, only two were given “limited confidence.” Of the 47 private providers reported on, the Q.A.A. issued just one finding of “no confidence” and two of “no reliance.”
A Supreme Court ruling could pave the way for a flood of appeals from private colleges and overseas students against a significant number of government immigration decisions, lawyers have said, writes David Matthews for Times Higher Education.
A private college in London has been given the power to award its own degrees in a move the government says will increase competition in England's higher education system, writes Angela Harrison for BBC News.
Students on private college courses such as animal chiropractic care, acupuncture and ‘contemporary person-centred psychotherapy’ have been eligible to receive state-subsidised funding during the past two years, with one private institution being given state loan access for nearly 100 sub-degree vocational courses in a single day, writes John Morgan for Times Higher Education.
A new £18,000-a-year private university headed by the philosopher AC Grayling and offering lectures by Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson and Steven Pinker has not filled any of its courses ahead of its opening next week.
Britain's first private dental school will open next September. The school, which will take 100 students a year on a five-year course costing £180,000, is expected to be the forerunner of many more private institutions offering specialist degree courses.
A group of leading independent schools is studying plans to set up an elite private university modelled on American liberal arts colleges, which concentrates on high-quality teaching for undergraduates rather than research.
Post-1992 universities could begin to change their legal status and open up to private investment in the wake of the University of Central Lancashire's application to the government to become a private company.
FoI reveals moves and countermoves in struggle for state cash and influence. For-profit providers have pressed the government to give them greater access to publicly funded student loans and open up teaching grant in high-cost subjects.
Glion Institute of Higher Education, one of the world’s top three institutions of higher education for an international career in hospitality management, announced today that it is opening its first branch campus in London. The new campus expands the reach of Glion’s Swiss hospitality education programmes to students and industry leaders in the U.K. Glion is a member of Laureate International Universities, a global network of more than 60 accredited campus-based and online institutions of higher education serving more than 740,000 students in 29 countries.
The bill on compulsory accreditation of all higher education institutions may not have passed political muster, but that isn't going to put brakes on the government's grand plans.