We have noted a couple of interesting developments in the UK higher education sector. Firstly, Pearson, which describes itself as the “world’s leading learning company”, and is the owner of Penguin and the Financial Times, is establishing a higher education college – Pearson College – which will be launched in September 2013. It will deliver the Pearson Business and Enterprise Degree Course focusing on preparing students for the world of business. The BSc (Hons) degree has been developed in conjunction with BT, Cisco, the Peter Jones Foundation and Atos. Students will study in Pearson’s London HQ or in its Manchester offices as well as during a residential at Royal Holloway’s campus. It was perhaps inevitable that we would see private sector companies beginning to get involved in designing degrees, as many have expressed their frustration that graduates are often ill-equipped for the business world. This is also yet another sign of the increasing trends towards heavier involvement of the private sector in the running of universities....
Bringing us neatly onto the fact that London Metropolitan University is in the process of bringing in a private firm to run all its services except teaching and the vice chancellor’s office. The contract, which will involve services including IT, library facilities and student services, is set to be worth £74 million over five years. We understand that the University has shortlisted Wipro, Capita and BT Global Services for the deal. According to the Guardian, the structure of the deal is yet to be decided however there is talk about the possible establishment of a subsidiary company, 100% owned by the university, that would have the option to sell shared services to other higher education institutions. This would make sense; we will highlight in our UK education SITS market trends & forecasts report, due out next week, that London Metropolitan has a five year plan in place to share its support services with other London-based institutions within five years. Changes to the VAT lays surrounding shared services for higher education institutions are making this option far more appealing. To date, only a handful of SITS player, such as HP and Logicalis, have established themselves in this market, but we expect other players to start to take note as opportunities increase.