England spent much of the 2010s trying to increase competition in higher education by making it easier for private providers to enter the market. Carl Lygo, founding vice-chancellor of BPP University, was among those who showed what that could look like.
Lygo helped to turn a professional training business into one of the country’s first for-profit universities. BPP was granted university status in 2013, three years after it became the first for-profit institution to secure degree-awarding powers. It has since grown to be one of the biggest private universities in the UK, with a student population of nearly 40,000.
After two decades at BPP, Lygo went on to lead Arden University in 2019. But as he prepares to retire and step away from his position as a leading figure in UK private higher education, he is less enthusiastic about the prospects for anyone hoping to set up a for-profit university today.
“Would I do it now? If I was looking to set up a private provider, I think unless I’ve got a particular niche, I wouldn’t be trying to do it now,” he told Times Higher Education.
“I just don’t think it’s attractive. The regulation is tough. You need scale to be able to make it worth doing. You need students into the thousands, not hundreds. Otherwise, you’d need somebody with deep pockets to fund it.”
