I will be speaking at the Warwick Universities Summit this Saturday on a panel comprising Louis Coiffait (Pearson Think Tank), Carl Lygo (BPP) and Paul Clark (Universities UK).
The theme is ‘Is privatisation and private funding the answer?’ to which my answer is likely to be, ‘only if you’re asking the wrong question’. But the composition and balance of the panel gives some indication of the state of things today.
John Holmwood will be on the panel on Widening Participation.
Venue: University of Warwick
Time for Panel: 3-4pm
Full timetable for Saturday and further details.
“Tickets for the summit will be £3 or £6 including a wine reception. Tickets are available through the University of Warwick Students’ Union. ”
The Council for the Defence of British Universities is holding its first public event on Wednesday 20 March at Senate House (2-6pm).
This event is now being held at the Royal Society
“After the Election: Alternatives in Higher Education policy”
Speakers include:
- Bahram Bekhradnia (HEPI)
- William Cullerne Bown (Research Fortnight)
- Thomas Docherty (Warwick University)
- Howard Hotson (University of Oxford)
- Martin Hall (University of Salford)
- Debbie McVitty (NUS Head of HE Research and Policy)
- Peter Scott (Institute of Education)
- Rachel Wenstone (NUS Vice President, Higher Education)
- and me.
It’s free but you need to register.
City AM reported on Wednesday that the government was planning to lift the
archaic rules restricting the use of words such as ‘Accredited’, ‘British’, ‘Group’, ‘International’, ‘Benevolent’, ‘Holding’, ‘Institute’, and ‘University’ in company names.
The government has indeed launched a consultation on company names and the inclusion of ‘sensitive words’ for which permission is needed. The relevant paragraphs are 38 onwards.
Paragraph 52 reads:
Those which appear to be particularly important to protect include: Accredited, Bank, Charity, Institute, Insurance, Police and University. Misuse of these words poses a high risk to the general public.
… which is somewhat different to the City AM account.
Still, the consultation questions are general:
1. Do you think all regulations relating to names should be repealed? Please give reasons for your answer.
2. Do you think regulations relating to names should be retained but reduced and simplified? Please give reasons for your answer.
3. Do you think the list of “sensitive” words should be reduced? If so, which words would you recommend for removal and why?
Last year, the government did reduce the qualifying size criteria for full university title allowing College of Law to restyle itself as University of Law before being sold to Montagu Private Equity.
Relaxations of the restrictions around the use of ‘university’ in company names can already be seen in Newham University Centre and Stockport College University Centre. Does the addition of ‘centre’ in these titles mitigate the ‘risk to the general public’?
Is this clear? ‘Newham University Centre (formerly University Centre Stratford) is the higher education faculty of Newham College London.’
Newham UC is charging £4,500, ‘so no need to miss out on your degree because you can’t afford it’.
Closing date for the consultation: 22 May 2013
Apologies for the low level of activity on this blog of late – I have been finishing off my book for Pluto Press, The Great University Gamble: money, markets & the future of higher education.
It will be out in April and can be ordered here.
As a co-organiser of Big Ideas, we will be holding an evening event to coincide with the launch on Tuesday 30th April at the Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place, London.
The topic will be more general than the book: ‘What do we want from Higher Education?
The Council for the Defence of British Universities is holding its first public event on Wednesday 20 March at Senate House (2-6pm).
This event is now being held at the Royal Society
“After the Election: Alternatives in Higher Education policy”
Speakers include:
- Bahram Bekhradnia (HEPI)
- William Cullerne Bown (Research Fortnight)
- Thomas Docherty (Warwick University)
- Howard Hotson (University of Oxford)
- Martin Hall (University of Salford)
- Debbie McVitty (NUS Head of HE Research and Policy)
- Peter Scott (Institute of Education)
- Rachel Wenstone (NUS Vice President, Higher Education)
- and me.
It’s free but you need to register.
There is a demonstration outside Woolwich Crown Court on Monday morning (11 February), where Alfie Meadows is facing his third trial after his first resulted in a hung jury and the second was aborted following delays.
Alfie was struck by a police baton on the demonstration of 9 December 2010 and required emergency life-saving brain surgery.
Details about the 9am protest can be found here.
Nick Petford, vice-chancellor and CEO of the University of Northampton, has published a piece on the Guardian’s HE Profession Network making a comparison between higher education and the world of professional football.
Anyone who has seen me speak over the last 18 months will have heard a version of this analogy. Petford makes the necessary first decision – to view universities as businesses – and identifies three themes on which to hang his comparison:
- commercialisation,
- internationalisation (different flavours of private equity are already at the periphery and benefiting from government support)
- and how ‘spectators’ or fans fail to see what’s really going on.
In fact, the analogy can be pushed further, especially if we look back to the early nineties, the formation of the Premier League, and the introduction of the Sky TV cash. Money moved around professional football differently after that. The new funding regime and its accompanying market in undergraduate recruitment achieves something similar – changed flows and investment opportunities.
So here are a few more points to consider:
Corporate form & group structures
In HE, we are already seeing a drive to change corporate form.
Following the example of Tottenham Hotspur, almost all high-level professional football clubs had created a holding company by the mid-90s. This allowed investors and executives to avoid the FA’s rules barring paid directorships and limiting the dividends that could be distributed to owners and shareholders. The ‘club’, now a subsidiary, met these regulations, the holding companies didn’t need to. The regulators were ‘gamed’.
New HE group structures are designed to achieve ‘tax efficiency’, autocratic flexibility for the executive, and value extraction by private equity.
Chairmen
If you look closely, you can already find HE’s equivalents of Peter Ridsdale and Ken Bates. Without governance arrangements adequate to the new HE terrain, vice-chancellors face even less scrutiny than the dodgy characters who have blighted football. Watch out for overambitious strategies built on borrowing!
Administration
Owing to spectacular mismanagement, over 50 UK professional football clubs have gone into administration since the early 90s, despite the increased sums flowing around the game. Some of these have gone bankrupt and been wound-up, with Rangers FC the most recent high-profile example. The government’s 2011 HE white paper stated that the coalition was no longer prepared to act as backer of last resort for universities.
The FA
With HE’s regulatory structure in limbo and the various quangos being hacked into shape to make allowance for the lack of primary legislation, we shouldn’t be surprised if their performance is as poor as the FA’s was back in the 90s.
Spectators and fans
In the last twenty years, fans have seen ticket prices increase at startling rates, but a cheaper, mass alternative to the ‘live experience’ has been made more widely available via television. You can create your own analogies using ‘tuition fees’ and ‘moocs’.
All the dangers that may befall universities can already be seen in the last twenty years of UK football. Time to start following the money, reading the accounts, and considering the best way to resist misjudged corporate strategies.
Note: many of the links here are to David Conn’s football coverage. His The Beautiful Game sets out many useful case studies for thinking about the new risks.
Liverpool UCU branch have made available a recording of my talk to them on 29 November 2012.
The video – located here – gives an overview of why universities may be seeking to change their statues and corporate form.
My opening comments make reference to this article written for The Guardian on the purchase of the College of Law by Montagu Private Equity. It also makes reference to recent developments at University of Central Lancashire.
Here’s a first glimpse of my book, The Great University Gamble: money, markets and the future of higher education, which will be published by Pluto Press in April.
Happy New Year!
I’m back after a short break. Here’s an article in The Guardian on degree classifications.
Critical Education 