YESTERDAY, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) published a detailed report into the effects of the Tory higher education bill due to return to parliament next week.
Under this proposed bill, the Tories intend to throw the entire higher education system open to for-profit private companies or ‘alternative providers’. They plan to fast-track degree-awarding powers to new startup institutions in a move described by the report as ‘a risk too far’.
This, the Tories claim, will ‘increase competition and choice in the higher education sector’ and ‘deliver value for money for students’. The HEPI report effectively shreds these arguments. It points out that: ‘In the past it could take six years for a provider to obtain degree-awarding powers. Under the new legislation, they can be given the same powers from the day they launch for a three-year probationary period, reducing the time it takes to acquire the title of university.’
So any multi-national private company can open up in a building and from day one declare itself a university with degree-awarding powers. These private for-profit companies will jump in with absolutely no scrutiny as to their ability to teach to degree standard in what is in effect the full-scale ‘marketisation’ of higher education.
The HEPI took a hard look at other countries which have adopted similar laws, notably Australia and the US where for-profit universities have experienced a massive growth as the financial rewards to speculators became apparent.
The report cites a number of examples in the US where very large educational ‘chains’ have collapsed including Corinthian Colleges which in 2011 ‘had 114 campuses and revenues of $1.7 billion. The following year, it made a loss and was under investigation at state and federal levels for aggressive marketing tactics, exaggerated job placement numbers and altered grades and attendance details. In 2014, Corinthian Colleges announced that it was to fold, leaving 72,000 students adrift and US taxpayers with a liability for $1 billion of federally backed loans. The Department of Education had to step in to oversee an orderly liquidation of several of Corinthian Colleges’ brands.’
As the authors of the report note: ‘Experience in the US and Australia shows overly generous rules for alternative providers are a magnet for questionable business practices. The end results can include stranded students, a bill for taxpayers and regulatory intervention.’
In fact it sounds all too familiar. This is precisely what has happened in numerous state schools turned into ‘academies’ where money is made through excessive pay to heads and lucrative contracts awarded to companies owned by those running the schools despite the fact that they are supposed to be non-profit making.
With higher education even the caveat of non-profit is absent and these ‘alternative providers’ will be free to make millions from excessive fees for students and milking the student loan service while providing degree courses that are completely untested and in some cases totally useless.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU, said of the HEPI report that it should ‘sound alarm bells in government’ as ‘we cannot afford to ignore the lessons from the US where the for-profit higher education sector has unravelled, taking billions in taxpayers’ money but failing the majority of its students. If we are to protect our students and the global reputation enjoyed by UK universities, the new legislation must protect taxpayers’ money from being handed over to a potential pool of unscrupulous providers.’
Asking the Tories to pass laws protecting students and the working class from unscrupulous profit hungry privateers is useless. The only way for students and lecturers to defend their jobs, pay and education is to demand that the lecturers’ unions call a nationwide strike that will be supported by students with college occupations and walk-outs as part of a campaign against the bill and for an end to fees and a return to free state education.
This was a right won by the working class in the past and it must be defended today by the whole working class coming out in support in a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government that will restore free education for all.
