by John Kersey

"As we look towards the future...colleges will be judged not by what some educational bureaucracy declares but by what they can do for their students. "
Alexander Mood, The Future of Higher Education: Some Speculations and Suggestions, Carnegie Commission on Higher Education

What is an independent university?
An independent university as discussed in this paper is a post-secondary educational institution which is not funded or controlled (directly or indirectly) by government. It is important to be clear that universities (such as a number in the USA) may well be under private ownership but nevertheless controlled by government or quasi-governmental institutions[1] as a condition of access to public funds[2]. The extent of government control usually embraces what is taught and how, and will also impose conditions on admissions and facilities to accord with government policies and targets. In general, it may be said that public funding always comes with strings attached. Why should the issue of independence arise? Because in practice, the control of educational institutions by government is ultimately in conflict with academic freedom, which can only be maintained either under conditions of financial independence from government or given specific governmental commitments in law to allow university autonomy, and academic freedom is a vital condition for the pursuit of scholarship.

Where the government pursues a socialist or neo-socialist policy on education, as is common in the Western world, it may force the university to apply criteria other than academic merit in admissions in order to fulfil quotas related to its social policies, often described as social engineering. This is relevant where, for example, government takes the view that higher education is a deterrent to crime and therefore resolves that more young people who would otherwise be at risk of committing crimes should be admitted to universities[3]. Clearly this is an objective that is potentially in conflict with the role of the university as an academic entity, since it is likely to mean that some of those admitted would not gain such admission on academic criteria alone. This in turn compromises university standards and may encourage such phenomena as grade inflation[4] and a general academic decline.

The independent university often has at the heart of its existence that it seeks to pursue its activities without government interference in order to enjoy academic freedom and control over its destiny. It is charged with regulating its own affairs, establishing its own funding and offering educational programmes that meet market needs. Unlike a government controlled university, if the independent university fails in its mission, no government will bail it out.

Some history of independent universities
Historically, most universities have come into existence either as the outcome of government foundation, foundation by a group of scholars with the intention of providing services on a largely non-profit or charitable basis (the Oxbridge model, leading in time to Papal recognition), or, since the nineteenth-century, as the result of the efforts of private enterprise, leading either to a non-profit or a for-profit model.

In the majority of cases, privately-owned universities have either chosen to enter systems of state regulation because the access to state funding that is then offered brings the prospect of significant financial rewards for their owners, or have been forced to do so because privately-controlled universities have become prohibited in law at a point following the foundation of that particular institution[5].

Thus in most jurisdictions it is only a minority of privately-owned universities (or institutions that are universities in all but name) that remain independent and stand upon their own merits solely. This is especially the case for small and specialist institutions which cannot afford the costs imposed by the state systems for entry, or have no such systems available to them, but are nevertheless permitted to continue operations (possibly sub conditione as the law dictates) in their respective jurisdictions.

Government intervention in university education is a relatively recent, post-war phenomenon. In the past, even universities established by the state were largely self-regulating and self-governing, for example in the UK. Under this system there were few serious concerns about the capacity of universities to govern their affairs. The increase of government control over the universities may be seen to have arisen not because of public outcry or university malfeasance, but rather because of the desire of government to bring university governance and admissions into line with their political views and agenda. More radically, such moves may also be seen as a political impulse to control what are potentially sources of powerful opposition to government policy.

Not only has this desire for control manifested itself in the universities, but also increasingly in schools and colleges of further education in the attempt to create a “ground-up” root and branch revision of the educational system. The creation of a national curriculum for schools, as in the UK, is a further indication that education is being manipulated so that it is at the beck and call of the alliance of socialist politicians and trades unions that forms the educational  public sector. What is taught now depends as much on fashionable ideology and concerns as on any conviction as to the permanence, utility  and value of particular areas of knowledge.

Legal standing of independent universities
This paper is not written from a legal perspective, but some comments on the issue are offered informally.

In the United Kingdom[6], where the law does not prohibit a course of action, that action is legally justifiable. This common law legal system is adopted by other countries which have currently or previously been under British rule, including Canada (except Québec), Australia and the United States (except Louisiana).

However, a number of jurisdictions, such as France, take a diametrically opposed  approach, with a codified civil law. In the words of the Freedom Association,

“Under the British convention everything is permitted unless it is, by law, specifically prohibited. The opposite applies in continental jurisdictions where nothing is permitted unless the law specifically allows it...

In summary, the British common law, built up over centuries, protects the freedom of the individual against coercion by the state whereas the continental system, based upon the Code Napoleon, is specifically designed to ensure the supremacy of the state.[7]”

Naturally this is a simple description of a complex matter. In some jurisdictions mixed systems have evolved, such as the particular brand of civil law practiced in Scandinavia. The implications of this have been that some areas are more closely regulated than others, and that there are still activities where a wide degree of freedom applies, as it would in a common law jurisdiction. This has been so for private higher education in Sweden until very recently, and still is so in Denmark.

To return to the common law, in practice, this has meant that where Britain or a similar common law jurisdiction wishes to reserve the powers of university title or degree awarding it must pass specific legislation to achieve this aim. In England and Wales, this legislation is principally the Education Reform Act 1988, which covers the award of degrees, and the Business Names Act 1985, which now reserves the powers of university title to institutions approved by the Privy Council.

Before this legislation was passed, it was legally possible to form a non-profit or for-profit company in the UK with the title “university” and to award degrees, and a number of institutions did just this[8]. Such degrees were not “degrees of the state” in the sense that they were approved or overseen by governmental authority or bestowed in consequence of the powers conferred by a Royal Charter, but were fully and equally valid in English law compared to those that were conferred under such authority or powers[9]. It was then a matter for employers and other institutions to decide whether such a qualification was acceptable for their purposes. As a private educational charity, University College, Buckingham, awarded a “License” (using a European degree title) from 1976 to 1983 which was in due course recognised by the Law Society and other bodies[10].

Other countries remain in the same position as England pre-1988, such as Denmark, which permits the free establishment of private universities and the award of degrees. There is no restriction or prohibition of such institutions, nor is there state control over their operation in the form of licensing, inspection or accreditation schemes. Consumers may choose freely whether a private institution suits their purposes and gain a legally valid award at the end of their studies[11].

A misunderstanding of this fundamental difference has occasionally led to the absurdity of criticism being levelled at independent universities for having no governmental “license” for their work, despite there being no such “license” available or extant for them to obtain.

By contrast, although France, a civil law jurisdiction, permits private educational  institutions, they must be appropriately licensed and supervised by the Ministry of Education. The scope of their activities is laid out explicitly and enforced in law throughout.  

• A summary is offered in a document by the International Association of Universities in I.A.U. Working Document Analysis: The Feasibility and Desirability of an International Instrument on Academic Freedom and University Autonomy (report prepared in response to request from U.N.E.S.C.O.)[12]  


• “II.2.4. Perceptions of Academic Freedom.
  II.2.4.1. Thus, academic freedom guarantees the liberty of those engaged in higher learning to teach, research and to express opinions in the areas for which they are qualified and the advancement of which they are professionally committed and to do so without fear that such considered views will make them answerable for délit d'opinion. An alternative interpretation, more in keeping with the Germanic legal tradition, regards academic freedom as the exemption in the area of academic endeavour and scholarship from government instructions and intervention.  

• II.8.1.1 External Autonomy.
  II.8.1.1.1. External autonomy is a criterion pre-eminently formal. If the decision to found a university was taken by a private individual - or group of private individuals - then the university will stand as an independent legal personality as it may also be if the status of an ‘organising power’ is either conferred upon it or transferred to it, by law. In several countries, however, the university stands as an ‘Administrative Service’ of the State. 


• II.8.1.1.2. This criterion is not hard and fast. ‘Free’ - that is non state - universities may become subject to general university legislation once they accept government subsidies or once their diplomas are recognised officially. In contrast to this is the recent change in French higher education which extends the right of a public service to enter into contractual agreements (contractualisation) with partners in the private sector.  


• II.8.1.2. Organic Autonomy.
  II.8.1.2.1. Organic autonomy confers upon the university the capacity to determine its own internal forms of academic organisation. State universities, for the most part, have an identical arrangement across all establishments within the sector of public universities. Free (non state) universities follow the provisions laid down in their Act of Foundation or Deed of Incorporation. In this latter instance, organic autonomy derives from the constitutional right to found educational establishments outside the public sector.”  

More about academic freedom
One consequence of government control is that what is taught and how it is taught are now subject to "no-go areas" in mainstream academia. Useful external articles concerning "academic socialism" are referenced elsewhere[13].

What has become particularly apparent in recent years is that the ideas of economic libertarianism and indeed of much of mainstream conservative thought, together with those who espouse such views, are increasingly unwelcome in mainstream academia in both the UK and the USA[14]. Such tools as a pervasive university and FE college culture of leftist “political correctness” and positive discrimination in favour of particular minority groups (which themselves have tended to support a leftist agenda) have been used as a means of active ideological discrimination, along with the the criterion of “collegiality”, as it is called in the USA, which effectively endorses the practice of appointing to positions from an "inner circle" of ideologically acceptable individuals endorsed by the existing faculty. This is above all a problem of the establishment of an entrenched ruling class rather than the diversity and democracy that should be characteristic of the sector. The issue has been explained clearly by Sean Gabb:

“According to their reformulation of Marxism, a ruling class keeps control not by owning the means of production, but by setting the cultural agenda of the country. It formulates a “dominant” or “hegemonic” ideology, to legitimise its position, and imposes this on the rest of society through the “ideological state apparatus”—that is, through the political and legal administration, through the schools and universities and churches, through the media, through the family, and through the underlying assumptions of popular culture. There is some reliance on the use or threat of force to silence criticism—the “repressive state apparatus”—but the main instrument of control is the systematic manufacture of consent. An ideology becomes hegemonic when it permeates the whole of society, determining its values, attitudes, beliefs and morality, and generally supporting the established order in all conversations and other relationships. Such an ideology ceases to be controversial for most people, instead being seen as common sense or the nature of things. At times, it can amount to a “discourse”, this being a set of ways of thinking and talking about issues that makes it at least hard for some things to be discussed at all.[15]”

Matters such as the "apprenticeship" nature of the perception of the Ph.D. in modern mainstream academia reinforce this discrimination by ensuring that those who are allowed into the ivory tower are unlikely to shake its foundations, and the PGCE/PGCHE fulfils a similar indoctrination role elsewhere in the system[16]. Today, where the ideas that have formed modern capitalism, that promote small government and that privilege individual liberty are found on university syllabuses, they are increasingly marginalised and denigrated; further, the study of the arts has increasingly metamorphosed into an amorphous branch of postmodernist cultural studies, allowing for the predominance of ideologically fashionable areas such as gender and ethnicity that increasingly add an overtly neo-Marxist aspect to discourse and promote such a view of the nature of the arts as hegemonic.

Threats to independence
Institutions that pursue a cosy relationship with the political establishment cannot claim to be genuinely independent. Professor Frank Furedi writes[17],

"In recent years, academic freedom has been called into question by the spread of bureaucratic rule-making. The standardisation of evaluation procedures, benchmarking and auditing subject academic life to an external script. At best, academic freedom has an uneasy relationship with regulatory processes. At worst, academics have to design courses that have the right kind of "learning outcomes" and they have to fit in their teaching with the prescribed procedures.

This has not led to an explicit attack on academic freedom. It has simply created an environment in which academic freedom has lost some of its meaning. It is not surprising that the academy has become so indifferent to the fate of freedoms that were hitherto seen as the precondition for intellectual enterprise."

The ultimate justification for the independent university must be that it privileges the academic freedoms seen rightly as the precondition for intellectual enterprise above the concerns of the political ruling class. This fits extremely well with a philosophy that is student-centred rather than faculty-centred, and thus makes immediate connections with democratic education concepts from the Greeks onwards.

The comfort of academic tenure is such that it encourages restrictive practices designed to perpetuate the status quo whilst ignoring the costs and compromise of integrity involved in such practices, since for the academic to do otherwise is to embrace unemployment or ostracisation from the academic establishment. However, within the independent university, particularly at specialist institutions, tenure is increasingly being eschewed in favour of more flexible forms of organisation, such as retained consultancy and contractual working. These structures (in other words a move away from the “job for life” ethos) make sense in all businesses that are concerned with efficiency. They are also a direct challenge to the focus of the tenured academic system upon the gaining and keeping hold on power as an oligarchy, with power being instead centred, as it should be, upon the market.

Effects on curricular innovation
Another aspect of academic freedom is the freedom to innovate in curriculums and methodologies. Strikingly, the academic mainstream shows very little openness to innovation and radicalism that questions its assumptions about how things should be done. Instead, there is an attempt to resist change by preserving academic practice in aspic (but notably this is a selective process, and only that which provides a convenient set of precedents is cited). We are told that the way things are is just fine, and indeed we had better accept it if we want to get on and fit in to the system.

The trouble with this is that it is not true. For the past thirty years and more the non-traditional higher education movement, working through a series of specialist grass roots institutions without significant financial endowments in the USA and elsewhere, has tried to introduce student-centred methodologies to university education, with tremendous market success considering the small proportion of institutions involved and their generally small size. That market success has had a simple consequence. The mainstream universities, concerned at competition for their territory and challenge to the system of tenure, have sought and often succeeded in persuading the state to legislate their competitors out of existence on the grounds that they threaten their definitions of quality in education. Further, a number have stolen their clothes and offered mass education programs that mimic certain non-traditional features without their crucial ideological context in individualised delivery. The attack on the private sector has been vicious and unrelenting, bringing about crude market protectionism by the engagement of the state to defend those publically-regulated institutions from which it derives income. Make no mistake, this is a turf war, and the consumer is the loser.

A changing definition of what a university actually is
For the past hundred years, there have been two main versions of university education. One involves study full-time or part-time on campus. The other has been study of what have usually been similar course materials through correspondence, with examination either at a university-designated centre or by means of continuous assessment  such as essays, projects and periodic tests (either open or closed-book).

The coming of the Internet has changed this, and offered radical alternatives that have based themselves on substantial challenges to both of these orthodoxies. In addition, the correspondence delivery model has been largely supplemented by the use of the Internet to do essentially the same things, with online testing and materials delivery via software ranging from common off-the-shelf applications to the increasingly popular open-source Moodle.

We have seen two essentially radical models emerge. The first is that of the virtual university proper, which is an institution that exists wholly online with minimal offline administrative support (both in terms of computer support and offline record-keeping etc.), which may itself be geographically diversified. This harks back to the mediaeval concept of the university as a community of scholars; the Internet has proved to be outstandingly successful as a generator and robust host of communities, and in as much as the institution is composed of the people who teach within it, this model offers hitherto impossible elements of synchronous and asynchronous contact and ease of networking.

Since the network is not the physical model of the campus, but instead is virtual, this model cuts free from the vast start-up costs of the campus and is highly accessible to both small companies and groups of individuals (thus giving rise to the possibility of online corporate universities, which has already been taken up with some alacrity[18]). It is remarkable how much of what is done on campus can be achieved online, and this continues to expand rapidly, making it eminently possible not just for a programme to be delivered online, but for an institution to effectively exist online.

Were such institutions to have the access to online academic archives and similar resources presently reserved to the mainstream, their platform for success would be complete and easily extendable to the postgraduate level en bloc. On the other hand, where the individual uses learner-contracted resources in their own area[19], such as copyright and academic libraries by particular arrangement, or bases their studies around their own extant area of professional practice, these issues can and have been overcome. One possible model is for the virtual university to work in co-operation with existing or new campus institutions such as laboratories where practical work and  training can be carried out. This has been seen in part in online medical education[20].

The second model is a slightly more conservative version of the first, where the virtual university serves as the backbone for a series of geographically diverse campus-based institutions, with or without degree-awarding capabilities of their own, which are thus connected in an overarching network to share common identities such as a consumer brand, resources and a virtual presence for inter-institutional communication. This model has generally enabled pre-existing campus institutions to unite for particular purposes, whether in the context of the mainstream (Universitas 21, U21Global[21]) or the private sector small-specialist category (Vancouver University Worldwide[22]). It is to be noted that U21 Global has set up its own virtual library (GALE) to support its MBA programme.

Standardisation is not historically characteristic of the university sector
In both the UK and the wider European Union we are today confronted with attempts to standardise academic, vocational and professional training through such developments as the UK National Curriculum and the Bologna process, and bodies such as QCA, QAA[23], and the Council of Europe. Related processes have been at work in higher education in the USA. All these may be seen as ultimately constituting attempts to restrict free educational choice for the consumer and replace the existing diversity of provision with a series of standardised and hegemonic "state awards" (naturally reflecting the particular educational and political ideologies and agendas of their promoters).

These ideologies and agendas blur the line between education and professional licensing. The outcome of education, whatever its context, should be more than merely narrow training; yet when politicians speak of education, it is invariably such training that they are describing. Thus we see the comments attributed to Education Secretary Charles Clarke,

“University courses should have a "clear usefulness" if they are to be funded by the public purse, Mr Clarke said. "I don't mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for the state to pay for them. [24]"

Naturally, it is possible to read Mr Clarke’s views as entirely supportive of a privatised higher education system that would encourage the very mediaevalists that he denigrates, but this is not his purpose. In the Leftist paper, The Guardian, whilst denying the comments reported above, Clarke went on to say,  

"What I have said on a number of occasions, including at Worcester, is that the 'medieval concept' of the university as a community of scholars is only a very limited justification for the state to fund the apparatus of universities. It is the wider social and economic role of universities which justifies more significant state financial support.[25]” 

So it is the political interpretation of this “social and economic role” that is at the heart of government intentions as to higher education, and that role consists of producing useful citizens who can serve the government’s explicitly political purpose. The direct consequences of this ideology are that those who are at odds with that political purpose are marginalised, and that there is a conscious attempt to eliminate both outcomes and processes of education that cannot be measured through a tick-box assessment of the type that has originated in vocational training[26]. In these aspects the very essence of education as a personalised experience as well as a pursuit for its own sake is being destroyed within the state - but an immediate justification is being created for those aspects to be embodied within private sector alternatives.

Nor is it in any respect the case that university degrees and other post-secondary qualifications historically represent a standardised product. Below, we reference examples from some of the most illustrious universities in the UK[27] - and we could add many more - to show how institutions are themselves charged with determining the meaning of a particular award, and that they differ substantially in their conclusions as to this respect. It will also be noted that there are several famous examples of fully valid, “earned” awards that actually represent no academic work. Harvard continues to bestow such a degree - the Master of Arts - upon newly appointed full professors who are not its graduates, without requirement of examination[28]. In the UK, the University of Cambridge bestows the M.A. degree under Statute B, III, 6 similarly[29], and of course there is also the post-B.A Oxbridge M.A. in its most commonly-encountered form.

Table 1

 

Degree	University of Oxford	University of Cambridge	University of London	University of St Andrews
Bachelor of Divinity (B.D.)	Postgraduate degree only open to Oxford graduates, ranking below master's degrees	Postgraduate degree only open to Cambridge graduates, higher in standing than a Ph.D.[30]	Three year first degree.	Three year first degree.
Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.)	Two year taught postgraduate degree below M.Litt.	One year taught postgraduate degree similar to London M.A.	Two year research postgraduate  degree immediately below Ph.D. and above M.A., similar to Oxford M.Litt.	Two year research postgraduate  degree immediately below Ph.D. and above M.A., similar to Oxford M.Litt.
Master of Arts (M.A.)	Degree conferred on holders of the B.A. after a period of time with no additional work required, sometimes on payment of a fee.	Degree conferred on holders of the B.A. after a period of time with no additional work required, sometimes on payment of a fee.	One year taught postgraduate degree.	Three or four year first degree in Arts subjects
Master of Letters (M.Litt.)	Two year postgraduate research degree.	Two year postgraduate research degree.	[Does not exist.]	One year postgraduate taught degree.

This further table of Bachelor of Music degrees may also be found interesting: 

Degree	University of Oxford	University of Durham	King's College, University of London	Royal College of Music
Bachelor of Music (B.Mus.)	One year postgraduate taught degree open only to Oxford graduates.[31]	Two year external first degree below the B.A.	Three year first degree equivalent to B.A.	Four year first degree.

Note that we have confined ourselves to a single country; were we to extend our comparison to other English-speaking nations we would find many more variances. Claims that mainstream post-secondary educational qualifications are somehow historically "standardised" are demonstrably false. Long may this diversity continue. On the QAA recommendation to scrap the Oxbridge MA, reactions from both universities have pointed out the destructive nature of this proposal,   We can also detect more than a little of the old-fashioned class war in the QAA’s approach. It is, of course, Oxford and Cambridge who have invented and defined the English Master of Arts degree; other more recently-founded institutions have adopted that designation – a number initially using the “unexamined” model (Durham in particular[33]) – and then changed their definition from an unexamined to an examined model for reasons of their own. It would have been perfectly open to London or Durham to call their examined one-year postgraduate degree “Master of Studies” or any other such title that was unused at that point in time, but they chose not to, and to continue with the Oxbridge terminology. Such evolution is a mark of the diversity and historic nature of British university provision, which should not be underestimated as a market strength.

“Anthony Smith, President of Magdalen College, Oxford attacked the QAA's proposals, calling them "a typically new mood of interference by government." He added that as the MA was essentially an organisational tool, there would have to be a replacement for it, "and the government will have achieved nothing but a change in the words. It seems to be a wave of control freakery that is going on."

Cambridge University has also hit back at the recommendations, denying that the present system is unfair or misleading and claiming that the proposals will only put an end to diversity, and quality that Dr Tim Mead, Registrar of Cambridge University, sees as one of British Higher Education's "greatest strengths.[32]" 

Government interference in universities is always undertaken on the grounds of "quality assurance" – but this is not the real story
Significant moves to interfere in the internal governance of universities and to accord them market protection are disguised by government as action taken on the grounds of quality assurance. In this respect the public are made to collude with government in a deliberate distortion of the issues involved.  

Part of this is the propagandistic encouragement of dependency on the state even where such is manifestly inappropriate. It is government, we are told, which "knows what is best for us" in education[34], which can distinguish between good and bad, which has the right to control education as a “public good”[35]. Yet education is a deeply personal matter; one in which choice, individual growth, reflection and fine discrimination are at the heart of the argument, and where freedom to determine one's educational destiny is paramount. It is only in a world where education is reduced to mere credential-factories that choice becomes redundant. As those factories churn out increasingly identikit qualifications, any claim to academic excellence is in severe jeopardy, because excellence depends both on diversity and on innovation. Gone is individual choice, to be replaced with the government's choice for us. After all, only the government's awards are good enough for the likes of you, aren't they?

But the trouble is, they are not. Government quality assurance schemes mask the fact that institutions under their charge are getting worse, not better. Faced with the Linus blanket of protectionism, universities are at risk of growing fat and corrupt. The government, or the accreditation agency in the case of the USA, proclaims loudly that all institutions under its care are created equal, and that their awards are equal in value. The market doesn't believe the lie; it knows that it is being fed brass in the place of gold. It knows that Harvard is harder to get into, offers better facilities  and attracts better teachers than accredited institutions at the bottom of the heap.

Yet it is precisely those at the bottom of the heap which rail most loudly against the supposed sans-culottes outside the government-controlled sector. They know that, with the exception of their government approval, there is all too little that separates their not-so august portals from the best of the independents, and indeed that the independents may well surpass them. The turf war is born of insecurity at its heart. If the competition cannot be destroyed altogether, there is seemingly nothing left for government-controlled institutions but to descend to the gutter and sling mud in the hope of influencing consumer choice in their favour. Quis custodiet indeed.

Adam Smith warns us of the potential for the corruption of publically-funded universities in The Wealth of Nations,

“If the authority to which [the university teacher] is subject resides in the body corporate, the college, or university, of which he himself is a member, and which the greater part of the other members are, like himself, persons who either are or ought to be teachers, they are likely to make a common cause, to be all very indulgent to one another, and every man to consent that his neighbour may neglect his duty, provided he himself is allowed to neglect his own. In the university of Oxford, the greater part of the public professors have, for these many years, given up altogether even the pretence of teaching.[36]”

Smith’s comments should be seen within the parameters of his time, yet there are significant resonances today. What Smith realises above all is that replacing regulation by academics with regulation by government is simply swapping one set of indolent masters for another. Only one master will ultimately ensure that the duties he describes are not neglected – because they will be crucial for institutional survival. That master is the free market.

Government quality assurance and accreditation schemes tell the public progressively less and less about the measurable quality of institutions, for all their vaunted purpose. The conclusion of ACTA's report on accreditation in the USA[37] - the most significant  piece of research on the subject in recent years - was simple,

"Putting the matter in a nutshell, we conclude that accreditation has not served to ensure quality, has not protected the curriculum from serious degradation, and gives students, parents, and public decision-makers almost no useful information about institutions of higher education."

This is a charge of the utmost seriousness. The US government puts its trust, and control of access to public funds, into the care of accreditation agencies. If they are unable to fulfil even a basic quality assurance role, then what exactly are they there for?

Further, government regulation masks rampant grade inflation in mainstream university degree results. James Bartholomew informs us that "in 1955, for every three third class degrees awarded by Oxford University, there was only a single first. Fast forward fifty years and in 2005, for every three thirds there were nine firsts.[38]"

This grade inflation is not merely the result of greater excellence in teaching and more good students in the university system. The university system has become less selective and more willing to accept prospective students with low grades who would not have previously gone to university at all. Now, there is pressure on universities to accept state school entrants with lower grades than their independent school counterparts as a compensation for the disadvantages state school entrants are deemed to suffer in social and other terms.

Speaking of education in general, British Conservative MP Theresa May commented in a speech,

"There is a widespread and deeply held view that increased red tape is acting as a distraction from the drive to raise standards….over-elaborate processes are being used to achieve straightforward objectives, leading to unnecessary duplication and confusing excessive lines of accountability in the current regulatory framework.[39]"

These “over-elaborate processes” sometimes barely conceal a politicised motive, as when they are used to impose an audit culture. The consequence is two-fold; firstly, academic endeavour is threatened because it is no longer seen as the primary objective of the university, and secondly, accountability is seen in social rather than purely academic terms. We have moved from a position where external scrutiny through external examining was sufficient to produce one of tthe finest academic systems the world has known, to a position where external scrutiny is an instrument applied to produce explicitly political ends outside the purely academic and to ensure that government, not the academics, has the last word.

For all that this change may be vaunted as more democratic, accountability is never genuinely given to the population at large. Control remains with unelected bodies consisting of government appointees. A comparison between this new vision of the public university with grass-roots academic institutions, where these have existed, shows how they differ profoundly in terms of ideology, responsiveness to public need and leanness of structure. Whereas government control is used to perpetuate a particular system of higher education that runs directly counter to market interests (because it is designed to preserve a monopoly that protects weakness), the grass-roots institution is driven directly by the needs of the market and cannot afford weakness if it is to continue to survive.

This government control over universities in the UK now means that universities give up their control over admissions in favour of government social engineering quotas. Writing about the latest instrument of government, Bartholomew comments,

"I attended the Independent Education Conference at Brighton College yesterday.

One of the speakers was from OFFA[40], the Office for Fair Access. He explained to the assembled heads of private schools that there was no need for them to think that OFFA was setting quotas for the proportion of children to go to universities from state schools - or, to put it the other way round, that there will be quotas on children with better exam results from private schools that will be allowed to go to such universities. No, no. It was just that higher education was a 'public good'. Higher education resulted in economic benefits and those who had it were less likely to commit crimes, among other things. Access should be widened.

He said OFFA believes very much in 'autonomy' for universities. So what was going on was not OFFA-imposed quotas. Rather, universities were being asked to set their own 'targets' for the proportion of state school students and these targets and approaches to widening access were being "agreed" with OFFA.

After that, OFFA’s role was to "monitor" how well each university was doing. He admitted that if a university did not do well and was clearly failing in its targets, then - and only as a last resort, he emphasised, because he was confident of agreement in the vast majority of cases - then the university might not be allowed to charge top-up fees.

This was, as one delegate said, "double talk".

To my mind OFFA - an instrument of government bullying - is like a man who goes to a woman and says: "Sexual intercourse is a public good. There is a lot of research indicating that it gives pleasure benefits. You are under no obligation to have sex with me. But I want you to write an 'access agreement' which includes a target of how often you will have sex with me. I very much believe in your autonomy, so I will set no quota. It will be your own target, which you set and I agree. After that, I will monitor how well you keep to your target. Incidentally, I have got a gun. What do you say?[41]"

If government regulation does not assure quality, what does it do? It creates an exclusive club of institutions, and the purpose of such a club is to keep others out. Only those which play the game by the rules of the club stand a chance of being admitted to membership, and even they must stand outside tugging their forelocks and promising to behave themselves if they are allowed across the threshold[42]. The radical and the controversial are conveniently eliminated. So are small specialist providers, since applicants in the UK must have at least 4,000 current students enrolled.

The educational establishment in the USA, and to a lesser extent in the UK[43], has tended increasingly to attempt to persuade the public that private post-secondary education is something from which adult members of the public must be protected, and that must be destroyed or brought within the government-controlled sector so as to eliminate it as a source of competition. This fallacy has been supported in many ways by mainstream institutions, including in some cases the use of paid lobbyists, the encouragement of consumer activism (an increasing concern of American liberals) and, most regrettably, the encouragement of the denigration of private institutions and those holding qualifications from them in the media.

One of the paradoxes of the issue is that smaller private institutions, ill-equipped with the huge financial endowments needed to talk the language of lobbying and legal redress, find themselves with limited access to the debate despite the vital part that they would have to play in it, and in some cases ill-prepared for the nature of the ideological ground upon which they find themselves. Large-scale corporate universities are less likely to find themselves in this position, firstly because they are less concerned with radicalism and experimentation and more directed towards refining the existing product of the mainstream for profit, and secondly because the usual pattern of the corporate approach has been for previously well-established and well-endowed firms to enter the market.

The media has been all too ready to print scandalous propaganda concerning private universities from state-sponsored sources without any serious investigation, which at its worst has led to a level of public debate on the issue of private universities that rises rarely above that of schoolyard name-calling. This is to some extent the result of the complexity of the issues concerned, which do not reduce into convenient soundbites, and also the public’s long-standing psychological dependence on the concept of state ownership of higher education, which is easily manipulated into the suggestion that the private sector poses a threat[44]. In fact, private ownership poses no more threat to higher education than it does to secondary education, where it stands as a benchmark for excellence.

It is absurd to say that the public cannot be trusted to choose from the available offerings in the marketplace according to that which suits its philosophy and purposes best.[45] Choice leads to diversity, and diversity breeds excellence. Without the means of competition and innovation, mainstream university education will be all but dead in the water as education, and it will be overwhelmingly dependent on government because the web of the state’s influence will mean that it is too compromised to cope within the free market. On the other hand, free market competition from both large and particularly small private providers will not only sharpen up poor performers in the public sector, but also introduce more private sector options which will stimulate growth and demand for educational provision as a whole.

Present issues of quality in the private sector
One frequent criticism of the university private sector has been that there have been relatively few institutions of quality within it hitherto (many of which have since accepted government control), and a great many that are at best indifferent imitations of the mainstream (generally medium sized companies adopting the large-corporate model referred to above). This argument is used by the mainstream institutions and their supporters in the media as a stick with which to beat the private sector in its entirety and to attempt to convince the public that it is to be feared and avoided.

In the private sector today, there are relatively few institutions that have chosen independence for genuine academic reasons. One major reason for this is the legal restriction of the independent private sector in many countries, making the foundation of private universities impossible or enforcing their conformity to mainstream models through the imposition of a governmental audit culture. In examining this fledgling sector, then, we can only discuss a comparatively small number of institutions and jurisdictions, and when talking about the USA, we are regrettably discussing an era that is now largely past.

Of those truly independent institutions that constitute the innovative small-specialist private sector, each is notable for its diversity of profile; none is like any other, nor are any similar to mainstream provision in all but superficial aspects. In them we find the seeds of the potential that is there in the private sector; and the truth that, from diversity, innovation and progress can - indeed must - result. It is these institutions that are feared above all by the mainstream, since they offer a genuine alternative and competition to their own provision. It is worth noting Vancouver University Worldwide[46], Canada, among others in this context, which is a diversified institution made up of geographically-separated equal member colleges[47]. Other institutions worthy of note in the USA include Greenleaf University and the University for Integrative Learning[48].

The large-corporate model has produced fewer interesting institutions that have remained independent. History throughout has suggested that, given the opportunity, large-corporate institutions will model themselves after the established system and take every opportunity to join it. Effectively, BPP in the UK is likely simply to be following the path laid down by the University of Phoenix[49] in the USA before it; where innovation has been largely in terms of structure and delivery methods rather than curriculum and content.

From this overwhelming hegemony of both public and large-corporate private institutions comes the demand for the elimination of the innovative small-specialist private sector through legislation or the influencing of consumer behaviour through media opprobrium. The small-specialist private sector becomes branded with the epithet of choice, “diploma mill”, on the basis of coarse stereotyping and cursory (often erroneous) judgement by supporters of the mainstream.

What is different in terms of changes in the concept of what a university is, and what it does, is feared and decried as “fraud” by such groups because it deviates from the current establishment norm (for all that it may be amply based in historical precedent, or even current mainstream precedent that is deemed inconvenient). Private sector university innovation is dismissed as merely “selling degrees”, ignoring the fact that it is the small-specialist model that is the one best placed to respond to market change and demand, particularly where it is concerned with distance and e-education.

Where the small-specialist element of the educational market should be deservedly in the vanguard of innovation, permitted to succeed or fail on its own merits, it usually finds itself excluded by the mainstream and dependent on public support from its own specialist rather than any general quarter – again a comment on the complexity of the issues involved. And when a particular lapse or failure does arise, the mainstream institution usually survives, whilst the small-specialist private institution sees even a relatively minor issue blown up into a full-scale public indictment of its very existence.

Conclusions
Standardisation is not in the nature of the academic beast; nor should it be if the university sector is to serve what is an ever more diverse market need and, best of all, to move towards individualisation of programs. Wherever the subject is human development, and where that is, as here, conceived in terms of academic achievement, differences not only can but should occur to reflect the personal nature of the learning experience. Diversity and choice are the strengths of a sound academic system, as is already abundantly clear at pre-tertiary levels of education. Whatever the qualification may be called, when an institution's graduates can point to the work they have done and those who have vouched for their achievements, they are pointing to something of substance and indeed to the most fundamental of issues in the judgement of any academic record. Employers and others need to realise above all that where they demand a given qualification, they must be prepared to quantify what that qualification represents in terms of competences and to establish whether the credential presented meets those competences. If they cannot do this, they have no business to demand the credential in the first place. And, as the tables above have shown, the same letters after the name do not invariably represent the same thing at all.

A few suggestions towards progress
It is a matter of basic natural and democratic justice that those critical of public sector provision should be able to set up a legitimate alternative to it and subject that alternative to market forces to establish its success or failure. Independent universities  that aim to enjoy a long-term existence must gain public confidence that what they offer represents a desirable and worthy academic achievement. They should not, however, feel that the only way in which this can be done is by narrowly aping the mainstream. The public must come to accept that university education is not by its nature unchanging and that there is room within it for development and radical thought. If the vision of an institution appeals, let individuals choose to join it. If it does not, let them have the tolerance to allow others who do not share their views to act as their opinions dictate. Education - so much more than mere training - is as much an article of individual faith as is religious belief; it is equally as worthy of treatment with sensitivity and an understanding of the complexity of the issues involved.

We already see a flourishing independent sector of tremendous diversity at the secondary level. There are independent schools of all kinds, including a number that are founded on democratic, individualised principles. Judgement of these institutions on performance becomes even more interesting when, as Winchester College has done in the past, they set and mark their own leaving examinations rather than those of the state bodies, and those internal examinations are then accepted by leading universities for entry.

Bartholomew, writing in "The Telegraph" on independent education[50], avers that "paying customers are the best inspectors". We agree entirely. Remember that government interference in university education was not the outcome of a public outcry that university provision was of poor quality, but an act of control and subsequently of protectionism. In the private sector, the market - students and employers alike - can decide for itself what is acceptable for its purposes. Some may reject what others accept. Each may find the education that is suited to his or her own philosophy, be that independent or otherwise, and needs, bearing in mind that one institution rarely suffices for all possible purposes. Thus it may be seen that the independent institution aspires to serve those groups of people who are in a position to benefit from what it has to offer and who find its ideology harmonises with their own.

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[1] The US regional and national post-secondary accrediting associations recognised for the purpose by CHEA and the US Department of Education are regarded as effectively placing institutions under governmental control through their recognition and access for their members to otherwise-unavailable public funding, though they are themselves independent bodies.

[2] The University of Buckingham in the UK, though ostensibly independent and fee-charging, has accepted government regulation via the QAA in recent years and so is now best regarded as semi-autonomous. Reference will be made later in this paper to its earlier history.

[3] This and similar British government arguments for higher education are summarized here:
http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Labour_market_information/
Graduate_Market_Trends/Beyond_the_financial_benefits_of_a_degree__Autumn_05_/p!eXeLcmm;$20$08$F  This in turn references “Quantitative Estimates of the Social Benefits of Learning, 1: Crime, L Feinstein, Wider Benefits of Learning Research Centre, 2002.”
[4] See Frank Furedi: “The degree is losing its meaning”, Telegraph 9/6/2004, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2004/06/09/tefuni09.xml
[5] This has happened progressively in many states of the USA.
[6] Scottish law is to some extent anomalous, though the broad principle applies.
[7] http://www.tfa.net/pdfs/ffre2.pdf
[8] We might note the following 1834 exchange reported in the Grenville Diaries, “LORD BROUGHAM: Pray, Mr Bickersteth, what is to prevent London University from awarding degrees now? MR BICKERSTETH: The universal scorn and contempt of mankind.” The University of London proceeded nevertheless to award degrees.
[9] In this matter, we note http://www.nova.edu/~barkerb/resume.htm where a holder of such a private degree references “Letter on file from the United Kingdom Department for Education and Employment stating that this degree was granted prior to the Educational Reform Act of 1988, Sections 214-217, and had an equal standing of all such degrees conferred in the United Kingdom prior to this date.”
[10] This was before the grant of their Royal Charter in 1983. See http://www.buckingham.ac.uk/facts/history/more.html
[11] The most prominent private Danish universities are Knightsbridge University and the Scandinavian International Management Institute (SIMI).
[12] http://www.junis.ni.ac.yu/Tempus/IAU%2520-%2520Statement%2520-
%2520UNESCO,%25201998%2520.htm
[13] formerly at www.johnkersey.org/rdr.html/educationquotes.html
[14] See Frank Furedi: You’d better make some noise while you can, available at http://www.frankfuredi.com/articles/noise-20050211.shtml
“There is a mood of intolerance towards those with unconventional, unpopular opinions. Some academics do not simply challenge the views they dislike, they seek to ban them and prevent those who advocate them from working or speaking on their campus.” and further, http://www.academia.org/pdf/my_life_inside_asylum.pdf
[15] Footnotes have been omitted from this quotation. Sean Gabb: Cultural Revolution, Culture War: The True Battle for Britain. Hampden Press, London, 2003, available from http://www.candidlist.demon.co.uk/hampden/
[16] See http://www.frankfuredi.com/articles/accreditation-20050506.shtml “In the case of the PGCHE it is almost exclusively about socialising academics into the ethos of the audit culture that dominates the campus. It is about indoctrinating new lecturers into values of a conformist orientation towards teaching.”
[17] http://www.frankfuredi.com/articles/freedomofspeech-20050909.shtml
[18] See Barclays University at http://www.barclays-university.com/buinfo/index.htm. It is not clear how this entity stands regarding the current UK legislation controlling university title.
[19] The concept of learner-contracted resources has been key to the University Without Walls project in the USA, as in the present University for Integrative Learning (http://www.uiledu.org/)
[20] See http://www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/0601/editorials/174.html and http://www.ivimeds.org/. Other medical schools have started to offer part of their training online.
[21] http://www.universitas21.com/. Note that U21Global has also set up its own quality assurance subsidiary, U21 pedagogica, at http://www.u21pedagogica.com/
[22] http://www.vancouveruniversity.edu
[23] See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/478163.stm and also http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/itolduso/ma.html
[24] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/main.jhtml?xml=/education/2003/05/13/tenedu09.xml
[25] http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,952780,00.html
[26] It should not be thought that such assessment is disapproved of per se, rather that it has its place among a range of assessment methodologies and is appropriate in a particular context, not universally across the spectrum of educational experience.
[27] This information has been sourced from university calendars and similar material.
[28] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_eundem_degree retrieved on 17 February 2006.
[29] http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/andrew/cambma.htm
[30] http://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/Queens/Misc/jargon/CUjargon-B.html
[31] http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/bmus.shtml
[32] http://www.oxfordstudent.com/mt1999wk1/news/privilege_axed and
[33] The change from unexamined to examined degree occurred in the early twentieth-century.
[34] The poster campaign announcing government regulation of the qualifications of therapists in 2004 took precisely this line. A critical view of these developments can be found at http://www.natcouncilofpsychotherapists.org.uk/warning.htm
[35] See James Tooley: “The Changing Role of Government in Education”, Encyclopaedia of Education, 2002, University of Newcastle E.G. West Centre, available at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/pdfs/Encyclopdia%20of%20education.pdf
[36] Smith, op cit, book 5, chapt. 1, “Modern Institutions of Education” available at http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won/won-b5-c1-article-2-ss1.html
[37] http://www.goacta.org/publications/Reports/accrediting.pdf
[38] http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com/archives/education/index.php
[39] http://www.selsdongroup.co.uk/education.htm
[40]> http://www.offa.org.uk/
[41] http://www.thewelfarestatewerein.com/archives/education/index.php
[42] In this connection, we should, however, mention the case of BPP and the College of Law, which have passed the initial hurdles to gain degree-awarding powers from the UK’s Privy Council. It remains to be seen whether they will gain these powers, and if so, whether their provision will differ in any significant detail from existing mainstream offerings. See http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2023005 and http://www.membersocieties.org/srilanka/pdf/ECNHigherEdu.pdf
[43] For example in the coverage of the issues concerning private colleges and immigration visas in the UK.
[44] These incidents rather call to mind the remarks of Stanley Baldwin, three times Prime Minister of Great Britain (from On England): "Direct falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speakers' meaning by publishing things out of context, suppression, - what the proprietors of these papers are aiming at is power, but power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."
[45] Prof. James Tooley, writing in Should the Private Sector Profit from Education (Libertarian Alliance, Education Notes no. 31 http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/educn/educn031.pdf ) identifies a solution thus: “Consumers of education, we are told by experts, will suffer from the ‘information’ problem. They don’t know what high quality education is, and this will allow devious business people to take advantage of their ignorance (Barr, 1993). This, for Dr Barr, is the paramount reason why we need the state to be in education. But we are ignorant in so many areas of our lives, but he does not think we suffer the same problem there. I know nothing about laptop computers, for example, but I was able to buy one of the highest quality without anyone taking advantage of my ignorance. How? I bought into a brand-name. We know that the company’s reputation is absolutely paramount, and that the company knows that some of its customers are informed, and can’t take the risk that I am not one of these. Hence the company has to have quality control procedures in place to ensure excellence. It is exactly the same with for-profit education companies around the world, all of which take quality control measures extremely seriously, to ensure that their students have the highest quality opportunities.”
[46] http://www.vancouveruniversity.edu/
[47] One of which dates from the nineteenth-century, though it became inactive within a year of its inception.
[48] http://www.uiledu.org/
[49] http://www.phoenix.edu/ 
[50] http://www.tg-enterprises.com/bartholomew/2005/01/independent-schools-arent.html