For-profit higher education providers could ¡°really strike a chord¡± with students worried about the value for money of traditional ?9,000-a-year degrees with ¡°ridiculous¡± long vacations, according to an influential education policy expert.

Lord Adonis, director of the Institute for Government think tank and a former education minister, said that it would be ¡°a jolly good thing¡± if for-profit private universities shook up the degree market with shorter, more ¡°intensive¡± degrees that could provide better value for money.

Giving a lecture at a dinner in London on 23 June organised by the 1994 Group of smaller research-led institutions, Lord Adonis said that private universities offered no ¡°magic bullet¡± but could offer an attractive alternative model of higher education.

¡°What the for-profit operators might have going for [them] is a different model of higher education,¡± he said. ¡°When people are paying ?9,000 a year and they¡¯re seriously worried about the return that they are getting, is this [traditional] model of higher education¡­ of basically part-time universities where you work two thirds of the year and you don¡¯t even work fully¡­ is that going to be the model for mainstream higher education in the future? Or could operators like BPP really strike a chord by offering much more intensive degrees for much shorter period of time?¡±

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He said that there could be merit in ¡°just abandoning these ridiculously long vacations ¡­ That only really makes sense as far as I can see if you want to travel the world or you need to get a job¡±.

¡°I suspect that competition will hot up in that area and my own view is that it would be a jolly good thing if it does. It may be that there are other models there that give much better value for money and give students a better learning experience too.¡±

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In the Labour government, Lord Adonis was a senior advisor on education in Downing Street, and spent a total twelve years as a minister and special adviser, most recently in the cabinet as Secretary of State for transport.

phil.baty@tsleducation.com