For-profit universities?

In an unusual step, the British government has awarded a private, for-profit, institution university level status with its own degree awarding powers. BPP College for Professional Studies, a private London-based college with courses mainly in business and law, will now be called BPP University College. The government may be trying this out as a test case, in anticipation of its apparent policy to have more private institutions involved in higher education.

Perhaps anticipating some criticism of this step, BPP’a Director of MBA programmes has defended the College’s approach to teaching, quality assurance and student support. She also declared herself to be happy with the description of BPP as a ‘sausage factory’. Focusing directly on the students, she argued, and with streamlined processes, BPP may be able to out-manouevre  the traditional public universities, not least because it will not be distracted by the teaching-hostile research traditions of the universities.

All of this is a major departure from normal government policies in these islands to date, in which private and for-proft institutions were given opportunities to develop their own higher education products but under the supervision or control of another degree-awarding body. But now, if we are about to see the arrival of for-profit higher education, we should be thinking through the implications.

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Tags: BPP, for-profit education, university status

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