European-American University™

History shows that in respect of most private-sector tertiary institutions not controlled by the state or quasi-state organizations, collaboration with public sector counterparts tends to be isolated to particular cases and has not usually resulted in longer-term relationships.

At first sight, there appears to be much to be gained from collaboration as far as research and scholarship is concerned. Most private-sector institutions are deliberately excluded when it comes to the dissemination of what is often pioneering research conducted under their auspices or submitted by independent scholars for the purpose of assessment for an award. Learned journals are restricted to those associated with publically-funded institutions regardless of the merits of work conducted outside the academy, and that this discrimination is effectively justified on the basis of a cartel of vested interests rather than on genuinely scholarly grounds. This means that the academy loses out on the potential for genuinely innovative and unconventional approaches which are all the more at the heart of intellectual inquiry for their rejection of the mainstream.

In addition, many of the criticisms raised concerning the relative paucity of resources available to self-regulating sector institutions could be ameliorated through private-public partnerships. Faculty exchanges, student placements and short residential components of programs have the potential to generate revenue and build relationships for both parties. In addition, the course materials and innovative program structures of many self-regulating institutions offer an efficient, market-driven approach that is too rarely found in the public sector.

A third aspect of collaboration, and the most commonly-found, is in terms of the validation of programs to enable a self-regulating sector graduate to receive a twin award from a public sector university. This process, rather similarly in principle to that of external examination, acts as a confirmation of the quality of self-regulating sector output and increases the acceptance of the program concerned as well as providing an additional revenue stream for the public sector provider. We note that one enterprising privately-accredited seminary in the United States has for some time had a collaborative relationship of endorsement with a British university.

Collaborations of the first two types have been relatively rare but not unknown. The main reason for their not being more prevalent appears to be entrenched discrimination against the self-regulating sector, with a failure to make the proper distinction between legitimate self-regulating schools and diploma mills. Public sector associations such as accrediting bodies and educational evaluators see their roles largely as gatekeepers to protect the vested interests of the public sector. This role involves marginalizing and denigrating the self-regulating sector in toto with the exception of those self-regulating institutions which show themselves willing to submit to state regulation. For this reason, we have become aware of a number of private-public partnerships of these types that have been deliberately kept unpublicized. These include acceptance of credits, dissemination of research and, most prominently, acceptance of self-regulating sector qualifications for the purposes of employment and promotion. Behind closed doors, public sector universities are often more than willing to acknowledge that good and worthwhile work is being done at the best of the self-regulating institutions. Acknowledging this openly, however, involves breaking the agreed code of omertà among the public sector. A key example was to be found some years ago where, at the same time as a vigorous campaign was being waged against a particular self-regulating school, associates of those behind the campaign were also privately negotiating to purchase the school in question.

As the self-regulating sector grows and brings forth more legitimate institutions, this position will become less tenable. The public sector accreditation cartel, aware of this, has generally agreed on a solution whereby the private sector is tolerated provided it is regulated to an extent where it cannot constitute competition for the cartel or be sufficiently innovative to cause a market threat - effectively bringing the private sector into an emasculated fusion with the cartel. In return, many of the larger self-regulating providers have been willing to go along with this because their chief aim is sufficient profit within the mainstream (particularly where access to state funding for the high school graduate market is secured) rather than the riskier route of innovation beyond it - although the latter holds out the prospect of potentially higher rewards. We note that at the time of writing, the share price of the group behind one such school has shown a trend to plateau rather than continuing to deliver the strong growth expected - which growth might perhaps have resulted from a less mainstream and more adventurous stance. Those self-regulating providers who refuse to comply with this unholy alliance are attacked and denigrated, being lumped together unjustly with diploma mills. For the public sector, collaboration with them cannot be countenanced.

This strategy makes it easier to marginalize the self-regulating sector, and it also accounts for the short-lived nature of many of the third type of partnerships - those involving award recognition. For self-regulating providers in countries where there is no system of quality assurance available through national authorities, there is often a wish nevertheless to engage with some kind of external review process that does not compromise academic freedom or innovation. Award recognition has offered this possibility, since it is usually undertaken program by program and proceeds according to agreed design and delivery objectives. However, public sector institutions which have undertaken this kind of collaboration seem generally within a short period  to have been placed under considerable pressure from controlling bodies to withdraw from it, because it risks breaking ranks with the agreed public sector strategy towards the self-regulating sector described above. This is regardless of the merits or benefits of the program or institution concerned. The aim is to ensure that the self-regulating sector is isolated, because if it is seen by the public sector to be an acceptable alternative, the commercial monopoly that the public sector holds might well disappear overnight.

We conclude that there are significant aspects, most principally financial, in which private-public partnerships between tertiary institutions could be beneficial to both parties. We believe that the principal reason why these partnerships have not taken root is because of a concerted public sector policy of discrimination against the self-regulating sector and because of academic conservatism, which are both tools to reinforce the public sector monopoly of tertiary education. We call for action to address these problems in the interests of academic and market freedom as well as of scholarship itself.