This blog was kindly contributed by Rob Stroud, Director of Quality Assessment, England at the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education.
In their recent HEPI blog, Professor Sir Malcolm Grant and Mary Curnock Cook rightly highlight some of the challenges that independent challenger institutions have faced entering the higher education sector in England – despite the opportunities envisaged by the White Paper Success as a Knowledge Economy and the subsequent passage of the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA) – and offer what I take to be some well-meaning critique of the regulatory and quality assurance regime.
Over the last decade, I’ve spent a lot of time working with independent providers, at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) leading a joint unit with the Department for Education (DfE), then the Office for Students (OfS), and now at the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). I have seen and heard first-hand the numerous policy and practical challenges they face. After the difficulties in the early part of the last decade, much effort and resource was put in place by government and other public and sector bodies to support and engage with independent providers. HERA’s implementation finally brought them into a single consistent regulatory regime.
