Sunday Posts

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 ...

Background This essay intends to explore the issue of educational quality in the context of a For-Profit Business School based in London. This is a privately owned business, which offers a Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme validated by a British university, and caters to mostly students coming from overseas. The school has no degree awarding power and has to follow the academic regulations of the validating university. The MBA degree is awarded by the validating university after the students successfully complete 8 taught modules and a dissertation. The Business School had to undergo an extensive review of its financial and academic capabilities to achieve validation to deliver the MBA programme. The validation was achieved following a well-defined university process. The university took great care to look at the financial records and management practices of the institution, as part of their initial vetting visit, and following this, the course, pro...