Franchise contracts ‘need more stability’ to succeed, says v-c

Franchised higher education teaching in the UK needs greater regulation in order to create greater stability for institutions and students, a conference has heard.

Franchising, in which universities subcontract the delivery of their courses to colleges, has attracted significant attention in recent months, amid concerns about high levels of student loan fraud and questions about teaching quality.

Speaking at a Westminster Higher Education Forum event on quality and standards issues, Nick Braisby, vice-chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University, argued that franchise provisions “need to be managed differently”.

Partners needed to “work together collaboratively as part of consortium” to ensure relationships between parent and franchising institutions functioned effectively, he argued.

“These relationships require stability in order to succeed, and they’re not typically managed across the sector in order to give them that stability,” Professor Braisby said.

He told the event that most franchise contracts give universities the option to exit such relationships on a “nofault basis” with just 12 months’ notice, adding: “These contracts simply don’t encourage franchisees to focus on the fundamentals of academic quality and delivering for those students. Instead, they have to perennially worry about the viability of their businesses.”

Professor Braisby said that he would like to see longer contract periods, longer notice periods for termination, and said that “these should be managed collaboratively with other franchisers so that the franchisee is never left high and dry”.

Franchise relationships need “active management”, with contracts also including “explicit expectations” around academic quality, said Professor Braisby, the author of a Higher Education Policy Institute report on the topic last year.

But the sector cannot do this alone, Professor Braisby said, adding that the Office for Students should step up oversight of franchises so that “every aspect of higher education delivery in this country is regulated”.

Many in the sector acknowledge that franchised courses can play an important role in widening access to higher education, but have raised fears that the financial incentives for hard-up universities may lead to concerns over quality being overlooked.

Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, the Sir Roy Griffiths professor in public sector management at King’s College London, added that the government and regulator needed to take firmer action franchising, and provide universities with better guidance for establishing such partnerships. 

“We have had neither the support nor the regulatory oversight and we need more of both,” she said. “It needs to have much more of a national and international strategic view coming out from government and the regulator.”

The OfS has now indicated that it will conduct investigations into franchised courses.

Karen Blackney, associate director of University of East Anglia Global, added that such action would make universities more alert to the risks. 

“When regulations come from above then people start to take a bit of notice and then hopefully the risk becomes too grim for them not to do this in the right way,” she said.

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com