Sunday Posts

The UK Government's proposed Higher Education Bill, which, among other things, makes it easy for For-Profit Universities to get degree-granting status, is expected to face steep opposition at the House of Lords ( see this story ). This is a long-awaited move, and many For-Profit operators, primarily from the US who are having a terrible time at home, are looking forward to this bill. UK Higher Education has a global reputation - arguably an average UK university is better regarded globally than an average US university - and being able to grant an UK degree is indeed a big prize when mass Higher Education is expanding so rapidly in Asia and Africa. Now, one could regard the House of Lords' stance as a retrograde one, and see this as a battle of entitlements - a few privileged people, retired academics among them, fighting for their corner, but this will be a mistake. The expansion of For-Profit Universities is likely to affect UK Higher Education - its effectiveness at home a...

For those who felt change is always slow and cumbersome in India, the recent move by the Indian government to annul the Rs. 500 and Rs 1000 notes overnight should be a clear sign that things have changed. Indeed, there are certain things which never change - the implementation was poor and thoughtless and the bewildering array of tinkering that came afterwards demonstrated the jugaad mentality - but Chinese-style decisive action may have now become politically fashionable. This may give hope to those who thought India would open up its Higher Education sector eventually. There has been a bill, drafted and redrafted several times but never acted upon, to this effect dating back to 1990s. Various governments since then expressed its intention to make the Indian Higher Ed competitive globally, but in reality, had done the opposite. While India expanded its Higher Ed capacity significantly since 2006, creating a few thousand seats every day on average, the sector remained steadfastly...

British Universities are very global and not at the same time.  If one walks into an university classroom, particularly a Postgraduate one, chances are to meet a  majority of students coming from outside the UK. In fact, almost 70% of the students in Research and Taught Higher Degrees at the UK universities came from outside the UK in 2013/14, as did 18% of the First Degree students. In England, 19% of all students are International, and one in five in Scottish universities would have been born elsewhere. 38% of all Business students, 32% of all Engineering students and 25% of all Law students are International. Add to this the 636,675 students pursuing an UK degree from abroad (of which 76,600 are in Malaysia and 50,070 in Singapore), mainly due to the franchising and other arrangements that have become a long-established tradition in the UK universities (UKCIS Data). UK universities also represent a global research superpower. BIS reports UK represents ju...

Yesterdays rather innocuous news that the University of Law has been bought over by the Global University Systems means more for British Higher Education than it appears. It may be the start of a wholesale transformation of British Higher Education, for good or for worse. For the uninitiated, the University of Law is one of the few private universities in the UK, and the only For-Profit one. It evolved from the College of Law, which was a Not-for-Profit entity, and which was bought over by Montagu Provate Equity, a PE fund with more than 4 Billion Euro worth of assets under management. Montagu buy-out eventually led to the transfer of University charter to a For-Profit entity after some hiccups, justifying the £200 million price tag. However, while this was one of the biggest PE deals in Education, it was also illustrative how little PE investors understand education. The valuation seemed to have solely based on the University license, which was not immediately available, but it ...

Private Higher Ed in the UK, as well as Higher Education in general, took a huge hit from the last General Elections. The Coalition government, over the last five years, effectively destroyed the business model of UK Higher Ed, and replaced it with a badly thought-through model that was stillborn. On the private Higher Education side, which was largely dependent on International students, the ever-changing regulations and poor implementation were catastrophic, allowing only the very crooked and completely dishonest to survive. In a way, the last election and its aftermath demonstrated fully how politicians can damage a whole sector. Hence, with another election due next week, it is worth thinking about what this might bring. In this discussion, the policy towards International students must feature prominently. Several reasons for this. First, the Private Higher Ed in Britain was always dependent on International Students till the last government changed it and made it dependent ...

With elections seven weeks away, the UK Higher Ed community is presumably anxious. Last election marked a decisive turning point for the UK Higher Ed sector - the Cameron Government pursued twin strategies of an inadequately thought through funding reform and a plainly disastrous clampdown on student immigration - which would have long term consequences for the sector as a whole. With the UK political debate becoming more vicious and backward-looking, the UK universities, many of whom are among the best among the world, can be understandably worried. In the last five years, Higher Education has become more global, except in the UK. Now that the major parties are all united in an UKIP-inspired fear of Europe, this may turn out to be proverbial nail - and start the eventual long term decline. One could reasonably expect some lengthier, weightier reviews of the impact of David Camerons five years in office on the UK Higher Education sector coming out in the next few weeks. However, ...

Les Ebdon, the Head of the Government's Office of Fair Access (OFFA), called for Universities to look beyond the grades and admit pupils based on 'academic potential'. ( See story ) But would that solve the problem? The problem he is trying to address is a usual aspect of British life, students from 20% of the 'affluent' postcode areas are 8 times more likely to go to one of the top 24 universities in Britain than others from plainer areas; and, when everyone takes into account all universities, the lucky winners of 'postcode lottery' are still 2.5 times more likely to get an university offer. What follows is that in most of these 'good' postcodes, house prices and rent have grown significantly over the last decade (and remained sturdy through the recession) and only people with a certain wealth and income could afford to live there. Add to this the fact that almost all white collar jobs, not just the elite ones, where you went to university ma...

The recent comments by Dr Stephen Jackson, the Head of UK's Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), making the case for a different kind of regulatory power to oversee private sector Higher Education in the UK, is significant ( Read the interview here ). Apart from the basic point about the visa fraud and criminality in the education sector, it is important to recognise that the Private Sector Higher Ed is really a different 'beast', and needs special attention. Besides, the Private Sector Higher Ed in the UK is really very different from most other comparable countries, and has so far been regulated quite badly using borrowed frameworks and out of date ideas. The comments made here point to some fresh thinking, though the proposed scheme may remain extremely difficult to legislate and implement. In context, it is rather unfortunate that this conversation is happening in the context of visa fraud (see the back story here , and here ), which will focus hearts and minds along t...

One of the things I get to do is to talk many UK institutions about their partnership plans in India. This is partly because of my engagements in the India Education Conclave last year, and partly because of my general interest in the area: However, this is not a commercial activity for me, and my interests are primarily educational and of maintaining links with India.  This gives me a rather interesting position of being both an insider and an outsider to these conversations, having just enough knowledge about the negotiations but a disinterested perspective, which is quite beneficial. I have noted my frustrations with the limited perspectives that the UK institutions often take in these partnerships, making the students the losing side in these transactions. ( See the earlier post ) What was left unsaid, however, is that the role the Indian institutions play, which contributes equally to the failures of these partnerships.  Understanding the dynamic of an Indian in...

Times Higher Education reports that two private colleges in London has received more money in public funding than the London School of Economics and School of Oriental and African Studies. ( See story here ) While we may argue on the merits of giving public money to private providers, as is the case in myriad public services, even the staunchest free market advocate may accept that this is perverse. One can't even argue that this is market forces at work: There is no way to explain why British students will prefer almost unknown institutions over the better known universities, except that we have managed to craft a system which has created all sorts of wrong incentives for over-recruitment. It seems that despite all the warning signals of the student loans scandals from the US, the government in England has managed to create a system and break it within barely two years. Indeed, one would argue that stories such as these is a mere case of jealousy of the public sector. But th...

Times Higher Education reports that the Student Loan Access for 23 Private Colleges have been suspended (See story ). This means that these private colleges will not be able to recruit any more students for the current academic year. Presumably, they would be able to recruit again for the 2014-15 Academic Year, when their numbers will be capped (they have been uncapped so far). Indeed, this should not amount to much as the main recruiting season, Autumn 2013, is already over, and some of these private colleges have recruited more students than they can possibly service. However, this tale of expansion leading to knee jerk reaction from the Government is yet another illustration how little the Policy Makers understand the Private Providers in Education. To be clear, private providers have not over-recruited. This is because there was never a limit set on how many students they can actually recruit, and hence the Government's decision, prompted by 'expansion', may appea...

The Times Higher Education League Tables are out, the usual self-congratulatory columns have duly appeared alongside a few long faces and the Conference Season have began in all earnestness. We just ran one ourselves, which was about Indian Higher Ed but the conversation primarily centered around how Brand Britain could help lift standards. Another is due next week - under the title 'Exporting Excellence'. The moment of Transnational Education has clearly arrived - and by common belief, UK Education institutions, primarily due to their 'quality', are expected to take the lead. It is timely therefore to ask how pertinent is this expectation, and whether UK Higher Education institutions will really be able to take advantage of the 'globalisation of education'. The strengths should be obvious: The UK institutions dominate the league tables after the US ones. Some of the world's best known universities are in the UK. The UK researchers get a disproportionat...

Early History While the growth and prominence of For Profit institutions, particularly of degree granting variety, is a relatively recent phenomenon, For-Profit education has a long history on both sides of the Atlantic. Reigner (1959) traces back the origins of For-Profit instruction to 1494 and the development of double-entry book-keeping in Italy. A popular book-keeping textbook was published by Hugh Oldcastle, who ‘taught the booke’ in London (Reigner, 1959). Hayes and Jackson (1935) traces the history of early business schools to the practice of one-on-one instruction on book-keeping, which evolved into the English Grammar Schools in the early Eighteenth century, which promoted a practical education for students who were not interested in classical training common in schools then. In 1617, a college at Henrico was proposed to raise money for cash-strapped Virginia Colony (Land, 1938, quoted in Kinser, 2006), and capital was raised for the same: However...