Search

The part of the higher education sector in the United Kingdom in which providers are not publicly-funded (including for-profit, not-for-profit and charitable) has been expanding considerably under Government encouragement. This paper aims to clarify the practical and public policy issues now emerging, by tracing the history of the emergence of this policy in the wider context of trends in higher education policy in the United Kingdom, and with reference to the changes brought about by devolving higher education to the "devolved administrations" of Scotland and Wales. It examines the claims made by alternative provider lobbyists that they will be able to provide something for students which would be different and better. It looks at the mounting evidence, including the findings of the Quality Assurance Agency, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, that a number of alternative providers were guilty of bad practice and even fraud in taking advantage of the availability of Student Loan Company funding for their students. The penultimate section describes the attempt by a small group of alternative providers to form an organisation for leaders of the sector and to dissociate themselves from these trends and emerging problems. The article concludes with the implications of the White Paper, "Success as a Knowledge Economy," and the Higher Education and Research Bill, both published in May 2016 for the risks and implications of this significant proposed reconstruction of the system of United Kingdom higher education.

Proposals for legislative change to the regulatory framework of higher education in England, as envisaged in 2011, were delayed, but a comprehensive "operating framework" was designed and a Register of providers created. The Green Paper published in November 2015 includes proposals influenced by the recent work of the Competition and Markets Authority, including the plan to encourage easier and quicker grant to alternative providers of degree-awarding powers and university title. It is recognised that this is likely to lead to the failure of some of these newcomers. For the first time a need to make provision for students to be "taught out" if they are unable to complete their qualifications at the provider they have chosen. This paper looks at the background to this current trend away from reliance on the stability so far of the publicly-funded university and at the implications for students needing "protection" if providers fail.

This article explores recent developments in national policy for academic libraries. It considers the shift from traditional to managerial academic librarianship; the move to "social space" and multi-use systems; changes in the balance between meeting teaching and research needs and in public funding priorities; the difficulty of making decisions about moving to electronic resources and saving space in holdings of paper copies; the consequences of the policies of "deduplication" and disposal of "surplus" copies; "aggregation" of library with other functions; the impact of the Open Access policy.

In November 2010, the British Government, modifying one of the proposals in the Browne Report published in October, decided to allow English universities to charge tuition fees of up to 9,000 British Pounds, while removing almost all the public funding previously provided in the form of a block grant. This had consequences the Government should perhaps have foreseen. HEIs, unsure whether they could remain financially viable if they did not, went for the highest fee allowed. The consequence is that the new system could cost the taxpayer more in providing loans for students at this level than the continuance of direct public funding would have done. Policy was developed to reduce this cost, and one of the ideas which emerged was to allow more providers into the system, including private providers. This has prompted discussion of the resulting value for money, for students and for taxpayers, and then of the meaning of "value", and then of the need to protect the quality of the courses on offer and the "value" of the resulting qualifications. A number of changes seem likely to be necessary in consequence, among them the revision of the rules for granting degree-awarding powers and university title to private providers both profit-making and non-profit-making. This article explores the case for and against these changes.

Many institutions have difficulties in resolving complaints and grievances and other types of dispute speedily and economically. Lapses still occur in following procedures; disputes frequently grow more complicated than they were at the start; they drag on; they waste the time of administrators and those involved, even ending sometimes in an obsessive sense of grievance and a wasted life for a student or member of staff and wasted cost, including opportunity cost, for the institution. Preventing such an outcome is a skill in which it is wise for institutions to invest time and effort. In the new scene of huge funding cuts and "Browne" student-led provision, institutions will be seeking new ways of staying on top of potential and actual disputes, perhaps by way of offering "Master Classes". This paper is intended as an encouragement to institutions to build on the often excellent staff development training they offer administrators and academic line managers. There is a great deal of goodwill, experience and expertise in the administration of universities and most of them have excellent and well-drafted procedures. Designing the procedures is one thing. It is quite another to ensure that staff know and use them. It is another thing again to ensure that when they face a practical problem in the form of a looming dispute such as a student complaint, an employee grievance, the collapse of a collaborative arrangement or the breach of a contract with a commercial funder, those with responsibility for dealing with it are able to bring to bear appropriately their intimate knowledge of the way their institution works. Good principle and good practice should always go together. Working through examples in a "Master Class" is a way of ensuring that the culture of the institution takes that for granted.

The sector is entering a climate of future funding cuts and fee rises, which are likely to prompt a growing number and widening range of disputes. This article describes the launch of a new Improving Dispute Resolution Advisory Service. The particular questions raised in this context by the introduction of student charters and the relationship of the "charter" to the "student contract" are discussed.

The doctrine of university autonomy in the UK contains a least two major "fault-lines" where the structure is inherently weak and there is danger of functional breakdown. The first occurs at the junction between the institution and the state, the second within the institution, where the unity in policy-making between academic and financial-and-managerial decision-making, which must underpin any definition of autonomy as the right to run its own affairs, often proves to be illusory and conflict may emerge. This article examines recent indicators of the strains which may be glimpsed at each of these fault-lines with particular reference to the London Metropolitan case and the emerging problems at the chartered University of Sussex.

After its recent Assurance visit from HEFCE, Oxford went through a high profile public debate at the end of which its academic community voted against moving to a governance structure which would have given Oxford a majority of external members on its Council. The Higher Education Funding Council asked Oxford to answer eight questions justifying its governance and administrative arrangements. Cambridge had had a very similar internal "governance" controversy a few years earlier but no HEFCE Assurance visit coincided with it. Cambridge had fewer external members on its Council than Oxford (two to Oxford's four) though that has now moved up to four. The process of the decision-making to bring about this change involved a rough ride for the administration and some strong words from the academic community. Cambridge has now had its own Assurance visit and the result seems to have been a report from HEFCE much less intrusive and not seeking to insist that it make radical and immediate changes to its governance. Apparently Cambridge is not going to have to answer the "eight questions". Perhaps the most interesting feature of the outcomes of these parallel processes of interaction with Oxford and Cambridge respectively is that it appears that HEFCE does not intend to treat them alike. Cambridge's anomalous governance is to be allowed to continue while Oxford is being put under heavy pressure to change its own to comply. HEFCE should perhaps tell us why.

The need for reform of university governance has recently come into question with a series of high profile examples of the apparent failure of the standard "sector norm" model among the post-1992 universities, at London Metropolitan, Leeds Metropolitan and East London Universities. This article takes forward the discussion in two previous (Evans, 2008, 2009). The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and the Committee of University Chairmen have produced reports and recommendations seeking to make the present model work better. The article examines the genesis of this model and its emerging shortcomings. It considers the implications of trends towards the diminution of student and academic staff participation and the results of Government initiatives, and suggests that a more radical review is needed.

In a previous article (Evans, 2007) I explored some of the challenges HEFCE has recently presented to Oxford and Cambridge governance. These are far from over, with HEFCE insisting that Oxford answer eight "questions" later this year and Cambridge throwing down the gauntlet, with a ballot on the modest attempt to raise the number of external members on the Council from two to four (Cambridge, 2008). But Oxford and Cambridge are also unlike any other universities because of the special features of their "collegiate" structure, which is now creating unprecedented problems in striking a balance between the funding of teaching and research, in which teaching does not suffer.

The "Times Higher Education Supplement" of 9 February 2006 briefly reported that the Privy Council, tasked with approving the statutes of universities, was now going to leave their internal arrangements in their own hands. These underlying policy directions need to be set in the context of the important change of emphasis from "audit" to "risk management", encouraged by the Higher Education Funding Councils which are the statutory bodies entrusted with the disbursement of public funding to higher education institutions. It remains a statutory requirement that a university have its accounts audited to a publicly approved standard, in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting for Further and Higher Education. The proposed changes to Privy Council oversight have been put together on the basis of a study of the needs of chartered universities, with another for statutory corporations to follow, but there is no indication of comparable research into the needs of Oxford and Cambridge. These two universities still operate under the provisions of the Oxford and Cambridge Act 1923, which have always given them a considerable liberty to create their own domestic legislation. The proposed lifting of the requirements for Privy Council supervision in other kinds of university is likely to stimulate consideration of the present provisions in both the ancient universities, because they too are affected by the policy directives to improve efficiency (lighter bureaucracy), and to see trouble coming and deal with it before it leads to waste of money and resources (risk management).

The Committee of University Chairman publishes a code of good practice designed, among other things, to ensure clarity about the authority on which decisions are taken on behalf of universities, subordinate domestic legislation created and the exercise of discretion regulated. In Carltona Ltd.v. Commissioners of Works [1943] 2 All ER 560 AC the question was whether civil servants were acting ultra vires if they acted on behalf of a competent authority without reference to that authority. Oxford and Cambridge, which preserve an ancient system of governance by direct academic democracy, remain testbeds of this principle, for their administrators are in effect their "civil servants", not their managers. This article examines the questions which are arising as both universities begin to create Senior Management Teams, and the implications for the higher education sector more widely. (Contains 44 notes.)

The Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration proposed a business model for universities in 2003. Pressure to change university governance to make it match the business model remains strong, and it is being most actively applied to Oxford and Cambridge. The Oxford and Cambridge governance debates (which began in the 1990s) open up the deeper questions which affect all universities in ways which are not possible in connection with the running of any other type of university. This article examines the emerging structural fundamentals and their apparent pros and cons in a attempt to clarify the issues within a framework less narrowly-conceived than Lambert's review of university-business collaboration.

Recent Government policy has been strongly in favour of encouraging entrepreneurship and partnerships with industry. A flagship project backed by 68 million British Pounds was launched by Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1999. Due diligence exercises by the DTI failed to ensure that value for money was obtained. What had been planned and announced as an educational charity became a Limited Company and the ban on using the money for commercial spin-outs was waived. There was imperfect quality control of projects and little control over costing. There appear to be funding lessons both for Government and for universities at a time when it is proposed to charge students top-up fees, for the sum given away by the Treasury here for one badly-supervised project represents the top-up fees of over 20,000 students.

Discusses the 1992 British Education Reform Act and identifies weaknesses in the existing accountability structures in both old and new universities and related implications for academic freedom. Argues that reviewing the quality of the administration may be as important reviewing the quality of teaching and research. (DB)