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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.

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.

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.