The private higher education market is burgeoning. It is already worth an estimated $400 billion worldwide – around 17% is spent globally on the sector and about a quarter of all higher education students are in private sector institutions. Dr Neil Kemp, visiting fellow at London's Institute of Education and adviser to the Association of Independent Higher Education Providers, points to a huge increase in numbers of students being educated outside their home countries: 2.7 million or a 50% rise since 2000. By 2025, almost eight million students would be educated internationally, Kemp told the 'Rethinking higher education' conference held in London this month.

The largest number of private institutions is in Asia followed by the US, and the sector is growing rapidly in Latin America and Eastern Europe – 300 in Romania alone since 1990. The private sector market is smaller in Western Europe and Africa but on the increase. In Indonesia, 60% of higher education is provided by the private sector.

In India, 10.5 million higher education students are evenly split between public, private and a mix of public-private partnership institutions. The Indian government has set a target of a 15% increase in enrolments by 2012 which means that another seven million places will be needed, with the state planning to provide two million – so the private sector will fill the gap, Kemp said.

In America, the private sector spotted that public universities were under-performing in the international student market. "The sleeping giant has woken up," Kemp warned his audience. He suggested that UK universities should look to forming partnerships with oversees institutions, private or public, or with private companies in Britain and abroad. The University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, for example, has a fruitful relationship with the private London School of Commerce in London which has branches in Melbourne, Dhaka and Kuala Lumpur.

Professor Kelvin Everest, director of academic affairs for China at Liverpool University, outlined his institution's partnership with US Laureate Education, a rapidly growing highly profitable company operating in 15 countries with 24 affiliated campuses.

"This partnership enables us to do things at a speed and in a way that British universities can't do," Everest explained. "They are brilliant at marketing: they spend half a million dollars on market research for a new MA, way off the scale of what we can do. Laureate also helps us with capital so we can moderate our risks.

"In return, we give them a brand, a quality of provision. As Liverpool offers online masters’ in 70 countries, mainly to middle management in areas like public health as it is very strong in clinical studies, graduates flock to the university to get their diplomas, so we add value to Laureate's network."

The university also runs summer schools for Laureate students while staff are building consultancies, especially on quality assessments, as far away as Peru. Everest added that all this helped with the establishment's finances after the research assessment exercise had been completed.

The partnership with Laureate has led to establishing a new independent university in Suzhou, China, ("not far from the Terracotta Warriors") which opened last September. Xi'an Jiao Tong-Liverpool University is strategically sited in Suzhou Industrial Park, and is expected to have a student population of 10,000 by 2013.

Everest was keen to spread the internationalisation message to the conference: "There's a great hunger out there to reap the benefits of what we have to offer."


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