Graduate News - BPP University opens
BPP University opens
This July, BPP became the first private company to be awarded university status by David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Skills.
Previously, only one private body has been given such status – Buckingham University – and no for-profit companies.
BPP - a private education company specialising in law and business and founded in 1976 by Alan Brierley, Richard Price and Charles Prior (hence the acronym) - gained the power to dish out degrees in 2007. Now, three years later, the organisation has achieved the title of fully-fledged university.
What sets the new BPP University apart from publicly funded universities, and indeed Buckingham University, is that it is specifically a company that hopes and intends to make a profit. It receives no public funding and is instead an education company whose product is education and whose customers are students. This means that it can set its own fees, its own standards for quality of teaching and it’s immune from ministerial interference.
Head honcho Carl Lygo was understandably pleased by Mr. Willetts’ decision. “The education landscape is changing” he said, “and over the next decade we will see a different picture emerging, where both students and employers will drive demand for their preferred method of study and training”.
Presumably the ‘preferred method of studying’ for students would be a higher level of teaching while paying lower tuition fees. However, given that BPP is privately owned and run, it can set its own unregulated fees. Not a problem, implies Mr. Willets: “It’s healthy to have a vibrant private sector working alongside our more traditional universities”. In fact, at £9,250 for a 3-year undergrad course, BPP offers a much cheaper alternative to the proposed £6k-£9k per year tuition fees in publicly funded universities.
The new university currently has only two departments across its 14 UK branches – the school of law and the school of business. There are, however, plans to expand the number of subjects students can read to include teaching and healthcare.
Is this new development the welcome, evolutionary shape of higher education to come? Or is privatisation just a big no-no in any circumstance? On the one hand, independent universities could potentially offer students smaller fees and/or a better teaching standard. It could, however, go the other way. Fees could rise unchecked, evoking the long-held argument that privatisation (in any sector of society, from education to healthcare) demonstrates an ideal of conservative elitism. Sally Hunt, University College Union's general secretary, is wary that BPP’s new status “could mark the beginning of a slippery slope for academic provision in this country”.
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