This week we have seen scandalous revelations, in The Sunday Times, of fraudulent loan activity at rogue colleges offering courses franchised from established universities. The rewards are obvious: the supposed student drops out with the cash from a £4,000 maintenance loan which they never repay, while the college and the lead university split the tuition fees for which the supposed student has borrowed.
The franchised sector is large, with 341 colleges franchising courses from 110 universities. Some 50,000 students were enrolled in 2018 on franchised courses; there were 138,000 in 2023. Little wonder the regulators and the Treasury are so concerned.
But we must not miss the wider picture. The UK’s university system is structurally compromised by over-expansion, which has prioritised growth over financial sustainability. This has reduced the quality of many degrees, undermined the wellbeing of many students and driven some universities to use new financial strategies to generate cash.
One strategy has been the sale of valuable inner-city land for development. Another has been the relentless focus in recent years on recruiting foreign students, who typically pay twice the domestic student fees. As immigration controls and international competition for students have increased, these revenues have plummeted, leaving many universities exposed.
Franchising is the latest symptom of this underlying condition. What is required is a deep rethink. The sector has focused on increases to student fees, which seem highly unlikely in the present context. A better approach might be to look at reducing costs and boosting diversity and innovation.
NMITE, the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering in Hereford, is one of a small handful of new providers that aim to do just these things. NMITE focuses on teaching and learning, without the research costs of a traditional university. Its students work 35 hours a week, 46 weeks a year, in teams and on projects set by industrial and other partners. Their engineering courses are accelerated, taking three years to masters level, not four.
The result is that at a time when many students struggle to get jobs, NMITE’s graduates are being snapped up by engineering leaders including Balfour Beatty, BAE and AWE. But we also need to look at the deep purposes of education itself. NMITE’s goal is to create a transformational, not a marginal gain both in learning and capability:
to take British youngsters who would never have considered going to university and help them become not just critical thinkers, but thinking doers. That seems a worthy ambition.
Jesse Norman MP is the chair of NMITE
This article was first published in The Times