Guardian article on NCH

This Saturday’s Guardian featured a long article on New College of the Humanities.

It provided some information to supplement the recent analysis of the relevant accounts on here.

It suggests investment amounts to £9million ‘or so’ – I’d assessed it at £10m.

Recruitment for 2013/14 entry came to 65 students, raising the number of students to 121. I suspect this means that the confidence expressed in the accounts was misplaced:

“The directors are confident that the envisaged student intake in the financial year 2013 will more than cover the operating costs of the college and result in a profit being realised in the 2013 financial year.”

The Guardian expressed the same reservation: ‘there is no prospect of imminent profit’. Technically, as a non-profit distributing entity, the teaching college can only make surpluses which it must reinvest. Money moves out the college through the various fees it pays to its for-profit parent, Tertiary Education Services limited. It is the parent which has raised the initial investment sums.

From the comments underneath the Guardian article, NCH students seem unaware that international and home students pay much, much less for the University of London degree that they will aim for.

Here are the details on Philosophy. That will set you back £460 per course. Once other fees  are factored in, a whole BA comes to £4 177. A cool £50 000 less than three years of £18 000 (though it seems that only a minority of NCH students are paying the full whack upfront).

What is perhaps more interesting is that, if NCH wants to achieve university status, it will have to change its current degree arrangements and partner up with another university so that it can have its own courses validated. That will lead to certain presentational issues as the University of London umbrella has helped NCH so far. Grayling mentions ‘tooth-sucking civil servants’. I imagine they are responding to the suggestion that NCH could jump straight to its own degree awarding powers without building up a track record as the junior partner of an established university.