I was speaking yesterday to a colleague who works in quality assurance, and she reacted with scepticism to my view, often expressed on this blog, that the White Paper will make little difference to private providers and in particular is not resulting in new private providers entering the sector.
On further discussion, I understood that her view was that many existing providers will no longer need universities to validate their provision. As for UKBA purposes they have to be overseen by QAA anyway, they might as well go the whole hog and get their own degree awarding powers. This will have a big impact on her work, and a non-trivial impact our mutual employer's validation income.
On reflection, I think what i have published on this blog agrees with this view, but has tended to trivialise it as an issue. My thoughts have been far more focused on the impact of Core/Margin, because that is closer to my own professional area - Planning. Of course these providers for the most part already exist, but people such as BITE or LSBF becoming degree awarding institutions in their own right is not a completely trivial matter, and I have not given this issue enough prominence in the past.
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