In May 2017, we looked at the issue of big business moving into the British student accommodation sector in a concerted way. On the same subject, the Financial Times is reporting this week that the market has increased in scale, so much so that the issue facing the sector now may be saturation . This development comes at a time when the British Higher Education (HE) system, at least, is being potentially impacted by a number of factors. In today’s post we will assess the FT report and aim to contextualise this supposed saturation of the market against the current issues in the HE sector. The FT chooses to focus on Plymouth, in the south of the UK, in order to set its analysis. The article is full of anecdotal accounts of the differing landscape in the city, and also the experiences of those who live there. However, there are a number of important statistics that are contained within the article. For example, investment in the sector has actually been reducing according to Savi...

We have looked at issues within the Higher Education sector here in Financial Regulation Matters before, mostly in relation to student finances , student accommodation , and also sector-related pensions . However, after some recent developments it is important to take a look at Universities as institutions and, crucially, the position that regulators are finding themselves in, despite any ideological claims as to their operating mandate. As the story develops that, recently, a British University was essentially ‘bailed out’ by the Government, it will be of interest to examine the regulatory reality that the recently-formed Office for Students (OfS) has found itself being exposed to. It was reported towards the end of this week that ‘ a UK university had to be given an emergency loan of almost £1m by the higher education watchdog to stay afloat this autumn ’. The BBC continued by stating that the OfS provided the money when the university faced the prospect of running out of ca...

This post focuses upon two particular elements that have been somewhat of mainstays here in Financial Regulation Matters , and those are the Treasury Select Committee and the tuition fee issue in the U.K. Upon Andrew Tyrie’s departure as Chair of the Treasury Select Committee in April of this year, we asked who it would be replacing him and how vivacious would they be in utilising the considerable influence that the Committee has. We had a brief taste of what Tyrie’s successor – Nicky Morgan – had to offer with her preliminary calls for RBS to release the controversial and likely extremely damaging report into the conduct of its ‘Global Restructuring Group’. Now, Morgan is returning to her old stomping ground from her time as Education Secretary and is launching an enquiry into the student loan system , ultimately aiming to examine recent policy changes like the tripling of tuition fees and the recent hike in interest rates related to the loans taken by students. So, today’s post ...