Oxford, but not that Oxford: For-profit schools thrive in UK

Oxford Business College and others like it make millions, largely by recruiting immigrants, and operate in an opaque corner of the British education system

College recruiters walked immigrant neighbourhoods, knocking on doors or stopping people in shopping malls, selling the merits of a business-school education and adding a surprising offer: Get paid to enroll.

“Money, money, money,” said Stefan Lespizanu, a former recruiter for Oxford Business College. “Everybody was saying, ‘Hey, push the money.’”

News of the opportunity spread, propelled by Facebook groups and word-of-mouth. Whole families signed up, helping turn a vocational school of 41 students atop a Chinese restaurant into a for-profit juggernaut. Oxford Business College, unaffiliated with the elite school nearby, now has several campuses and more than 8,000 students. That transformation made millions of dollars for its owners, company records show.

Years of free-market changes to British higher education have created opportunities for for-profit schools like Oxford Business College. Through opaque partnership deals with publicly funded universities, schools can offer undergraduate degrees and get access to the British government’s student aid. Some are marketed as ways to get an easy degree and quick money, in the form of about $16,000 a year in government loans for living expenses.

“Join a university without any qualification and get up to 18,500 pounds,” one advertisement on Facebook reads, listing no school, only a phone number and the money figure, which is about $23,000. Dozens of similarly anonymous posts appear on Facebook groups for Eastern Europeans in Britain.

Higher-education experts say that partnerships between publicly funded universities and for-profit schools like Oxford Business College can prepare older students and those in underserved areas for better careers. Oxford Business College offers two-day-a-week schedules to working students and others who take non-traditional paths to higher education. Some students said the college offered opportunities that they otherwise would not have, and a national student survey showed strong approval ratings.

Many of the partnerships are new, and it is difficult to determine whether they help students land higher-paying jobs after graduation. The data, in general, is murky.

What is clear is that schools are making money in a fast-growing corner of the world-renowned British university system with little oversight. Regulators say the system is vulnerable to exploitation.

Oxford Business College has at least three partnership deals with accredited, publicly funded universities. Every new student admitted under these deals means tuition money for both the college and its publicly funded partner.

That created huge incentives to enrol students, former recruiters and interviewers recalled. Recruiters, known as “sales executives,” said they were paid based on how many students they enrolled. Some students who struggled to speak English were admitted, according to more than a dozen students and former staff members.

Even applicants who plagiarised answers on admissions tests were given a second chance or, in at least one case, put forward for admission, according to internal messages among the interviewers, who tested the applicants’ English. “He copied and pasted his answer from an online source,” one interviewer wrote in a text message to his supervisor. “Pass him,” she replied.

Many students said they were happy with the chance to learn business principles and improve their English. But others wondered how they would repay their loans and whether the school was adequately preparing them for good jobs. Interviewers questioned whether, with such a lenient approach, the students they passed could benefit from an undergraduate education.

Oxford Business College declined repeated requests for interviews over several months. In written responses to questions, the school said it offered educational opportunities to a diverse student body. It has robust admissions standards that are consistent with its peers and rejects 60% of applicants, said the school’s director and co-owner, Padmesh Gupta.

In an October memo about fraud risks, England’s higher-education regulator, the Office for Students, said that partnership agreements were at risk of exploitation. “Students may be registered without appropriate checks that their language qualifications and skills are genuine,” it wrote. Students may be pocketing living-expenses loans, it added, “without any intention of meaningful study.”

Debates over for-profit colleges are common in the US. In England, they have emerged only recently, following changes that have made the higher-education system more like its American counterpart. But rules that exist in the US are not in place in England. For example, Oxford Business College offered its students a “golden ticket” of 250 pounds, or about $310, for everybody they referred who enrolled. That practice is prohibited in the United States.

This business model succeeds in large part because of how England funds higher education. Universities used to be largely free, financed by direct government spending. That money has been steadily replaced by tuition and student loans. The loans cover tuition for the school and living expenses for the students, who are required to repay the money only after making $34,000 a year.

Experts say it is good that schools tell low-income students that money is available. But the money should be pitched as a way to finance education, they said, not as the point of enrolling.

Buckinghamshire New University, the publicly funded school whose 2019 partnership propelled Oxford Business College’s transformation, said that it had seen “no evidence of wrongdoing” but that it would pause recruitment through the college and assign staff members to oversee recruitment and academic programs there.

The University of West London, another partner, said it was confident that its students at Oxford Business College met the same admission standards. Ravensbourne University London, a third partner, did not respond to questions.

In a brief telephone interview, Titiksha Shah, a dress designer who owns 60% of Oxford Business College, said she did not know how the school runs on a daily basis.

It has changed in recent years, she said, to become a “government-funded college.”

Partnerships between publicly funded universities and other schools, known as franchising arrangements, have been possible for years in Britain. But only recently have they have become so lucrative, experts say. That is because direct government aid has all but dried up and tuition is capped by law. Universities, particularly those that cannot attract higher-paying international students, are scrambling for revenue.

“The market has got a lot more competitive and desperate,” said Mark Leach, the founder of Wonkhe, a higher-education research organisation in England. He called the nearly unchecked proliferation of for-profit schools through franchising a policy failure that would ultimately need reckoning with.

Ninety thousand full-time undergraduate students were enrolled as part of franchising arrangements in the past academic year. That number has nearly tripled in four years, according to the Office for Students. Regulators do not conduct checks on partnership deals, and academic data is not broken out by franchise agreements, making it hard to tell how students perform. NYT