British Education - Malaysian Money

The University of Wales (not in fact the only university in Wales) is a troubled place.


Last year, a BBC Wales piece provided damning evidence about three of their approved overseas courses: a Thai fashion school unaccredited in Thailand; a Malaysian business school run by a pop-star with bogus degrees, and an American Bible college which, as well as teaching fundamentalist ideas, is unaccredited - well, except by the University of Wales.

These kinds of courses are accredited to award University of Wales undergraduate and even graduate degrees. You study there - you get a degree from Wales. They've since cut ties with the offending institutions but another one, in Singapore this time, is now in the spotlight. The investigation is ongoing but here's what some Singaporeans think of the questionable college.

If this had happened once, it might be written off as an exceptional event, but given that it's happened three or four times, it's an institutional failure. Why would a university risk ruining its own reputation by associating with dodgy degree-mills? Well, the thing is - and the university admits this - these courses are a key source of funding:

"The university said the profits from its international validation programmes were invested in Welsh higher education."

So we have a conflict of interest. From a business perspective it doesn't matter if the "accredited partner" is teaching that the earth is flat, so long as they pay up.

That's bad but it gets worse. We have a British university, which is reliant on funding from overseas colleges. These colleges of course have to make a profit themselves, and they make money from their students. So the UoW is taking money from foreign students - many of them frm countries considerably poorer than Britain - to fund the British education system. Is this ethical? Are these students getting their money's worth?

Clearly every case is unique and most of the accredited courses are probably fine, but the problem is, it's hard to know. When three or four dodgy courses have managed to slip through the net, you have to ask whether the net of "quality assurance" is working

The BBC Wales program contained a reminder of the kind of issues at play here. "Dr" Fazley Yakoob "MBA", the Malaysian pop-star, at one point said that people were keen to get University of Wales degrees via his college because of the glamour attached to the fact that the Prince of Wales is Chancellor of that institution.

Now this will have had most British people laughing into their tea because over here, Charles, Prince of Wales is regarded as out-of-touch, arrogant, and a bit of a crackpot. He's best known for his views on alternative medicine, for talking to plants, and his dislike for modern architecture. Certainly he has little of the respect accorded to the Queen, or to his sons Harry (fought in Afghanistan) or William (handsome, getting married).

Yet the British monarchy is, for some reason, probably more popular outside of the UK than inside it; perhaps some people elsewhere think that the fact that the UoW is associated with Prince Charles means that their accredited courses must be legitimate.

The University of Wales seems to be reaching the end of its lifespan, with a new report saying it should probably close soon. But the industry of overseas accreditation by British universities seems unlikely to go away.

As British universities lose public funding they're being forced to seek money from elsewhere. British students of course will be first in line, which I'm not happy with but they will at least be paying a fair price for their education; universities will be limited by law to charging £9000 per year which is basically the cost price for a year's teaching (plus a thousand or so on top - but with inflation, not for long). The idea that British students could be subsidized by Malaysians, however, is very worrying.