The Green Paper assumes that higher education ¡°works like other markets¡±, failing to appreciate the risks of taking a consumer-focused approach and letting a university fail, a vice-chancellor and former senior civil servant has warned.

Stephen Marston, who leads the University of Gloucestershire and was formerly director-general for higher education funding and reform in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, criticised the department¡¯s plans for regulatory changes at a Universities UK conference on the Green Paper.

The Green Paper plans to merge the Higher Education Funding Council for England ¨C where Mr Marston also formerly worked ¨C with the Office for Fair Access to create the Office for Students.

¡°The proposed remit for the Office for Students is really quite narrow,¡± Mr Marston told the event held in London on 26 January. ¡°But students don¡¯t experience their higher education just within a teaching bubble. They experience the whole institution. It matters to students that the whole institution is thriving, well managed, well led.¡±

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He warned of ¡°a risk in thinking that the higher education market works like some other markets where market exit is quick, clean, easy¡± and that students would suffer from the ¡°very long process¡± of a university¡¯s decline.

Hefce has an oversight role covering institutional financial health. It was ¡°in the interests of students that someone has the role of trying to spot where an institution is just beginning to send out the wrong signals¡±, Mr Marston said.

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He added that the Green Paper¡¯s desire to create a regime for ¡°market exit¡± was ¡°another illustration of where viewing universities as though they were simply service suppliers into a normal market breaks down¡­Market exit doesn¡¯t only have consequences for students and graduates, it potentially also has serious consequences for that community [in the university¡¯s region].¡±

Polly Payne, who holds a joint role as director of higher education in BIS, addressed the question of whether there will be a higher education bill to implement the Green Paper.

She said that ¡°probably the most straightforward way to achieve a lot of this is through dedicated HE legislation¡± and that a bill was ¡°a desire from our department¡±.

But she added: ¡°The question is, as ever, whether there will be enough legislative time to table [it], against all the other things the government wishes to achieve. We are very much hoping so, but we will not know until the next Queen¡¯s Speech what the legislative proposals are.¡±

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john.morgan@tesglobal.com