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    The UK government will decide whether BPP University should continue to be eligible for university title and degree-awarding powers, after its US owner was sold to a private equity consortium for $1.1 billion (£899 million). BPP, one of only three for-profit universities in the UK, saw the sale of its owner, Apollo Education Group, completed last month. The deal, which takes the company private, also includes its big US for-profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix and Western International University. The new owners are a consortium including Vistria Group, a private equity firm run by Marty Nesbitt – a Chicago businessman sometimes described as Barack Obama’s best friend – and former US deputy education secretary Tony Miller. The consortium also includes “funds affiliated” with private equity firm Apollo Global Management, according to the Washington Post. The change of ownership for BPP comes as the UK government nears the final stages of steering through Parliament the Higher Education and Research Bill, which aims to further open England’s sector to new private and for-profit providers. While ministers believe that new providers are needed to introduce greater competition for established universities, critics believe creating more for-profit universities that can go through repeated changes in ownership may have an impact on quality for students. An independent review of BPP will now be submitted to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, including checks on whether the institution continues to meet student number and governance requirements. Hefce will, in turn, advise the Department for Education on the institution's future status. Carl Lygo, BPP's vice-chancellor, said that "nothing has changed" at the university since the sale was announced. "Neither of the new owners has any record in delivering higher education in the UK and so their plans will be carefully scrutinised by the Department for Education," Professor Lygo said. "This is not a rubber stamp process." A DfE spok
    6 years ago by @prophe
     
      Mar2017UKEnglishstatusBPPfor-profit
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      Current higher education policy in England is based on “bad pub economics” and ministers have failed to learn the lessons from international developments, according to a leading academic. Lorraine Dearden, professor of economics at the UCL Institute of Education and research fellow in education at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, lamented England’s 2012 trebling of fees to £9,000 and current plans in the Higher Education and Research Bill to ease the entry of new private providers as being driven by a desire to create competition. "There are very, very good economic reasons why the market alone cannot be allowed to operate in higher education,” said Professor Dearden in a keynote speech at the Central for Global Higher Education’s annual conference in London on 1 March. She cited “credit market failures” for student lending that means government has to provide loans, the fact that higher education brings “social returns” as well as private returns, “risk and uncertainty” caused by student reluctance to borrow, and “information problems” that mean prospective students cannot know the costs and benefits of their higher education until much later in life. The government’s misguided notion that price competition between universities would occur under the £9,000 cap – when in reality all have ended up charging the maximum – was “bad pub economics”, Professor Dearden said. The £9,000 fees policy failed to take into account the fact that income-contingent loans meant the repayment risk from higher fees was borne by government rather than universities or students, she added. “If you want to allow a range of fees, what is important is that the higher education institutions need to share some of the risk of non-repayment,” she continued. That would mean a system that better reflects the “true costs and benefits” of courses, Professor Dearden said. She added that there were currently “lots of economists trying to work out” how to ensure that universities “have skin in the game”. Professor Dearden also accused Jo Jo
      6 years ago by @prophe
       
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        The government has suffered further defeats in the House of Lords on plans in England for the teaching excellence framework and the opening up of the sector to new private providers. Earlier in the week, peers defeated the government by passing an amendment that ensures the results of the TEF should not be used to determine the fees that an institution can charge. On 8 March, the House of Lords – where the government does not have a majority – inflicted further defeats. The government now has the choice of accepting the amendments, or bidding to force through its proposals with the backing of MPs. An amendment, proposed by crossbencher Baroness Wolf, Labour peer Lord Stevenson and Liberal Democrat Lord Storey, was passed that would severely limit the government’s flagship plans to bring in new providers to compete with universities. Critics backing the amendment had warned of risks from for-profit providers gaining degree awarding powers and university status. The amendment would ensure new providers either remain subject to the same requirement to pass through four years of validation before they can gain their own degree awarding powers, or had been granted permission to use such powers by a quality assessment committee. The government had wanted private providers to be able to award degrees on a probationary basis from the start of their operation and for England’s new regulator, the Office for Students, to take over the granting of degree awarding powers. The OfS would also have to be “assured that the provider operated in the public interest and in the interest of students” to gain degree powers, says the amendment, passed by 201 votes to 186. On the TEF, peers also backed an amendment that would ensure the government still creates “a scheme to assess and provide consistent and reliable information about the quality of education and teaching”, but prevents such an exercise from being used “to create a single composite ranking of English higher education providers”, as well as ensuring that its data a
        6 years ago by @prophe
         
          Mar2017UKEnglandEnglishprivatedelayed
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          All three of England’s for-profit universities owned in Netherlands Calls have been made for greater scrutiny of the ownership of for-profit higher education providers after it emerged that BPP University is owned in the Netherlands by its US parent. The disclosure means that all three of England’s for-profit universities are owned in the Netherlands, which is known for its attractive corporate tax regime. However, Apollo Education Group, which has owned BPP since 2010 and was recently bought by two US private equity firms, said it did not gain any tax advantage from Dutch ownership of the institution. BPP has benefited from £26.6 million in tuition fee payments via the public Student Loans Company over five years since 2011, according to SLC figures. Companies House documents show that BPP University is owned by BPP Holdings, which is in turn owned by Apollo UK Acquisition Company Limited, which is itself owned by Coöperatieve Apollo Global Netherlands UA (UA is the abbreviation for the Dutch-language term for “excluded liability”). England’s two other for-profit universities, the University of Law and Arden University, are both owned by Global University Systems, a company whose leadership is Russian and which is registered in the Netherlands as a “BV”, the Dutch equivalent of a private limited liability company. The government’s Higher Education and Research Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, aims to bring in more private and for-profit providers to compete with universities. Times Higher Education asked Apollo why BPP is ultimately owned in the Netherlands, whether or not Netherlands ownership conferred any tax advantages for Apollo, and whether the location of ownership is likely to change under the new owners of Apollo. A spokesman for Apollo Global, the group’s subsidiary for its non-US operations, said: “Apollo Global’s Dutch structure was put into place in 2011 in conjunction with the development of a new global learning platform. We do not gain any tax advantages related to the s
          6 years ago by @prophe
           
            UKfor-profitDutchNetherlandsBPPMar2017Englishprivate
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