There is a bigger problem than bogus or fake universities

Are some private or alternative higher education providers simply scams? As a researcher in this area, I’m often asked this question. The suspicion that surrounds the private sector probably stems from the fact that so few constraints are placed on private higher education provision in the United Kingdom – anyone is free to establish a teaching institution and call it what they like, with very few exceptions.

Some restrictions apply to the title ‘university’ and the power to award degrees, which are both legally protected. However, there have been numerous institutions operating, or apparently operating, in UK higher education using the title ‘university’ without sanction. These have ranged from the ideologically motivated to the outright criminal.

So how do they get away with it? The problem is not unique to the UK. United States President Donald Trump was not entitled to use the term ‘university’ in the title of his ‘Trump University’ venture (2004-10), not, at least, in New York State.

Characteristically, despite being warned in 2005 by the New York State Education Department that he was in violation of New York Education Law, Trump continued to use the title ‘university’ anyway.

The Papal Bull, Royal Charter and the Privy Council were at one time empowered to establish an institution as a university in Britain. Now, at least in England, the authority lies with the Office for Students.

Any name that features the term ‘university’ even if qualified by a suffix, such as the recently founded University Academy 92 (UA92) or the University Campus of Football Business (UCFB), requires sanction from the Office for Students – in these cases it was in the form of a letter of non-objection.

Unsanctioned universities

Some institutions have simply adopted the title ‘university’ blithely or even in defiance of any legal restrictions. The Anti-University of London was an educational experiment initiated in February 1968. It was intended to provide “revolutionary courses… and do away with the unsatisfactory student-teacher relationships”.

Broadly, its mission was one of deinstitutionalisation. The courses offered were those not available in traditional universities, or at least not in the way they were going to be ‘taught’ in the Anti-University. Courses included sociology, psychology – taught by RD Laing – and literature, but also ‘Black Power’, ‘Underground Communication Theory’ and ‘Jeff Nuttall is Fat’ (the course was led by Jeff Nuttall himself).

By spring 1968, it numbered 300 students and 50 faculty members. High on ideals but low on practical resources, anyone was free to attend the courses, but the courses were not themselves free. This was a source of dissatisfaction from the onset. Despite charging tuition fees, such income quickly proved inadequate.

The Anti-University lasted only six months before being evicted from its original premises in Shoreditch after falling behind with the rent. It moved to Soho and eventually diffused across various participants’ homes and pubs, maintaining an intermittent presence until at least 1971.

Ironically, it was the introduction and escalation of tuition fees and the growing burden of debt graduates were expected to shoulder that re-animated the spirit of the Anti-University almost half a century later. The name Anti-University was revived, as the AntiUniversity Now (@antiuniversity), and similar revolutionary ambitions were expressed, although this time with an emphasis on free education.

The Anti-University Now has no identifiable premises, although the original 1968 site of the Anti-University now houses a designer boutique selling shoes on the ground floor, and ‘luxury apartments’ above.

Other institutions using the title ‘university’ without sanction include the Ragged University, with its aim “to act in the tradition which built the free education system of the United Kingdom”; the IF Project (“The IF Project is a ‘Free University’”); and the Free University Brighton (FUB).

FUB offers the most substantial courses amongst the ‘free universities’ – four-year degree equivalents in social science and humanities, and philosophy. The courses offered by the ‘free universities’ are generally sustained through free labour, which itself means they are unlikely to prove enduring.

The ‘free universities’ all share an institutional insubstantiality – they are not legal entities in the way standard educational providers are, nor do they charge students to attend.

Consequently, official attitudes towards them (illegitimately) adopting the title ‘university’ seem to be one of tolerance, possibly informed by a sense that they are largely inconsequential, more like educational co-operatives than profit-driven ‘challenger’ institutions.

Fake universities and bogus colleges

There have been several outright fake UK universities. That is, institutions illegally adopting and operating under the title ‘university’. These include: Rutland University, Stafford University, Ashcroft University, Newcastle International University, Robert Gordon International University, Hashford London University and Ridgeshire University of London.

None of these, despite appearances, have ever been located in the UK. They exist virtually, somewhere in cyberspace, often assembled from the webpages of the genuine universities their names resemble.

Fake universities function either to defraud students or funders of registration and-or course fees, or to produce specious qualifications designed to deceive employers, legitimate educational institutions or immigration authorities.

Once identified as fake, the websites don’t have a lasting presence, but their authors will often be way beyond the reach of any effective UK or European Union regulation. Warnswick University, for example, originated from Uruguay; Hashford London from Malaysia, the latter, additionally, registered in the Ascension Islands to take advantage of their ‘.ac’ domain.

Bogus colleges, by contrast, are an entirely domestic construct, the phrase used by UK government ministers to connote colleges, language schools and schools guilty not of acting in the manner of fake universities, but of operating to circumvent the immigration system and of effectively being portals for illegal immigrants.

According to the Education Select Committee, it was estimated that some 90,000 former students remained in the UK in violation of their visa status. Partly because of figures like these, later revealed to be a gross exaggeration, colleges have been the subject of sustained official attention and attrition since 2010.

James Brokenshire, then minister of immigration, claimed in 2015 that the government had “struck off nearly 900 bogus colleges”, that is, revoked their licence to sponsor international (non-EU) students for student visas (Tier 4 visas).

The prevalence of bogus colleges, however, is likely to have been overstated. Mike Ratcliffe, having interrogated the official figures, noted that “at least 200 of the names of providers on the list provided by UKVI [UK Visas and Immigration] can’t count as a bogus college”.

Around 200 genuine colleges, including at one point the London Metropolitan University, lost or relinquished their right to recruit overseas students but remained conflated with the (putatively) bogus colleges on the UKVI list – those suspected of being in existence to channel illegal immigrants posing as students.

The effect of the campaign against ‘bogus’ colleges is likely to have reduced the number of independent or private higher education colleges between 2010 and 2017. The private education sector was targeted with particular rigour. Although being ‘struck off’ does not itself prevent the colleges from operating, it does deprive them of international student fee income and consequently many simply closed.

Fraudulent colleges and courses

Less ambitious than a fake university, but no less illegal, fake colleges and courses have used another means of appearing as a credible provider – accreditation by professional bodies.

A Norwich couple, one with 14 previous convictions, established two institutions: the International Distance College and the British Nutrition Council, both registered at Companies House, with the latter presumably intended to provide the college with specious accreditation and substantiate claims of international recognition for its proffered qualifications.

The apparent ‘online courses’ were cobbled together from elements of genuine providers’ material. With an internet presence and global reach, the International Distance College defrauded around 900 individuals and cleared something between £225,000 (US$291,000) and £333,000 (US$431,000).

The couple were found guilty of two offences of fraudulently running two companies in 2015-16, and both companies were officially dissolved via compulsory strike-off in 2017.

Overall, the incidence of fake or fraudulent providers is relatively rare even in an educational sector subject to scant official oversight and, as some of the examples I’ve cited indicate, not all the problems are rooted in, or a product of, the private sector.

My view is that students in private institutions run a far greater risk of investing time and money in their education and experiencing poor or sub-standard provision than outright fraud, if only because there is little independent quality assurance in the private sector.

Even as the Office for Students draws the more established private providers closer to mainstream higher education through its new regulatory regime, the vast majority of private providers will continue to lie outside this framework and, whatever the quality of their provision, go largely unassessed.

Dr Stephen A Hunt is a research associate for the Centre for Global Higher Education and is based at University College London, United Kingdom.