Franchised higher education – where a student studies for a course designed by a lead provider at a partner provider – is not a new idea.
Many older providers started off teaching to prepare students for exams managed by the University of London. Others have roots as regional outposts of established providers, bringing the opportunity to study to underserved areas.
The idea of the franchise is that there is an intellectual property in learning – that a course in business written by academics at one provider has a quantifiable value even when delivered by other academics elsewhere. It’s a branch campus without a branch campus, an expansion of capacity without the investment.
In recent years it has become a locus of suspicion. Unscrupulous universities (to this government, is there any other kind?) stacking up top-sliced fee income while fobbing students off with (at best) a substandard experience or (at worst) actual fraud.
