AIHEP Conference - National Meeting: 1 March 2010

The conference focused on two main themes:

• The need to be treated equal to public sector institutions in terms of the issuing of visas to international students. This was critical for private providers as they depended entirely on the fee income deriving from international students, whereas public providers had multiple sources of funds, mostly through government.
• The importance of gaining degree-awarding powers for UK private institutions.

More private sector education institutions will be seeking degree-awarding powers as a step towards university title. David Willetts MP, Shadow Higher Education Minister, addressing the conference, said that UK university title was precious and must have strong safeguards. However he was concerned that some foreign universities, of questionable repute, were able to operate in the UK with their full title, while quality UK private providers found it extremely difficult to gain the distinction.

Further he asked whether the regulations for degree awarding powers might be too restrictive for private providers particularly as, in addition to meeting all the academic requirements, they had to ensure profitability through close executive control. The structures will necessarily be different to those of the public sector.

Was the current review of the QAA’s approach a missed opportunity? Was it merely tinkering at the edges, rather than looking more fundamentally at the new needs to meet the ever-evolving diversification of institutions, international partnerships and modes of delivery?

Should the public sector be subject to the same scrutiny and sanctions as the private? If a UK public institution falls short of QAA standards might we see them also losing their degree awarding powers?

Jeremy Oppenheim of the UK Borders Agency affirmed their commitment towards ensuring equal treatment for all higher education institutions. He said it was likely that a number of private institutions will be included in the list of ‘Highly Trusted’ institutions when this is published in April.

He re-affirmed UK BA’s commitment to encouraging international students to study in the UK and will work positively with the sector. He added that there will be close monitoring of drop-outs in particular and if any institution is found to be falling short of requirements, whether public or private, they will be removed from the approved institution’s register.

Tim Andradi, representing the AIHEP members, said that AIHEP was keen to see all rogue operators closed. However the concern was that government and the education bodies should not treat all private providers in the same way; it was not a single homogenous entity. He suggested that one approach to cut bogus student applications might be for all international students to provide their full course fees in advance with this sum being held in a separate client account.