The BPP School of Health

Yesterday's news that BPP is branching out into a new professional area by launching a School of Health provides a good example of the way our HE system continues to evolve only haltingly towards a more open market, and some of the important barriers that still exist to private providers. The specific subjects offered are Psychology, Chiropractic and a little Nursing, as well as entry-level programmes designed for healthcare workers with very limited formal qualifications.

I'll take these in reverse order. As the existing health professions continue to evolve (nurses take on jobs formerly done by doctors, and become an all-graduate profession) there has been increasing emphasis on formal training and development for health care assistants and other support workers. London South Bank, for instance, offers a range of Foundation Degrees aimed at these workers and closely aligned with local NHS Trust. You will see from the materials I linked to that students are either in NHS employment, or offered NHS training contracts before they come on the course. So there's nothing very new in what BPP are offering, and their integration with employers (the key competitive advantage they have in e.g. Accountancy or Law as compared to the established universities) is not all that strong.

Chiropractic is another interesting choice, because it is a profession not regulated by the Health Professions Council. Psychology is regulated by the BPS, but unlike most existing University programmes (including private providers like Buckingham), BPP's programme doesn't seem to have BPS accreditation. No doubt BPP will gain accreditation in time, and develop increasingly strong NHS links, but we also see how the forest of poorly-coordinated regulatory bodies that surrounds the existing HE sector (and are a royal pain from a day-to-day management perspective) make it difficult even for respected providers like BPP to break open new areas.

Why haven't BPP chosen some easier targets? This little table shows you that:

JACS2 Subject Line	Applications	Accepts	Ratio of apps to accs (:1)
A1 - Pre-clinical Medicine	84,598	7,798	10.8
A2 - Pre-clinical Dentistry	12,712	1,196	10.6
B1 - Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology	30,466	3,315	9.2
B7 - Nursing	218,599	24,587	8.9
D1 - Pre-clinical Veterinary Medicine	8,485	971	8.7
B8 - Medical Technology	14,608	1,804	8.1
X1 - Training Teachers	58,374	7,388	7.9
B2 - Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmacy	32,849	4,539	7.2
L5 - Social Work	81,285	11,334	7.2
W4 - Drama	53,942	7,464	7.2
K1 - Architecture	31,062	4,379	7.1
Y Combs of soc studies/law with business	20,293	2,995	6.8
L1 - Economics	51,603	7,800	6.6
C3 - Zoology	9,991	1,544	6.5
B4 - Nutrition	7,139	1,150	6.2
C7 - Molecular Biology, Biophysics & Biochem	17,436	2,872	6.1
Total all subjects	2,847,012	492,030	5.8

Source: UCAS

These are 2011 data on subject areas with many applications, and high application-to-acceptance ratios. In other words the market is here. Drama is in there, where the barrier to entry is capital costs rather than regulation, but for the most part the dominance of health and related subjects is clear.

From David Willetts' perspective there is very little he can do about this, of course. The HPC, the BPS and the NHS don't answer to him.