The financialisation of higher education

by reestheskin on 23/03/2018

Comments are disabled

Nice article in the FT. It is about the increasing use of capital markets by UK universities, and the deal by Portsmouth is highlighted. It joins some dots:

Because the Portsmouth deal is private, so are a lot of the details about it – the borrowing cost, the contractual stipulations. But one aspect in the public domain is the emphasis placed on university rankings in the deal’s press release. ]Text below] From that release:

According to The Economist’s own ranking of UK universities, the University does more to boost its graduates’ earnings that any other university in the UK. The University was ranked 37th in the 2018 Guardian University Guide (having risen for the third successive year from 43rd in last year’s guide and 49th in 2016) and for the third consecutive year, it ranked in the top 100 young universities in the world, in the Times Higher Education ranking of universities which are less than 50 years old.

Even if it is not an explicit part of a lender’s investment process, university rankings are a critical part of the emerging financial infrastructure for universities. They mediate both the demand of student-consumers (in line with the guidance of their parents and schools) and the overall marketing process of debt issuance (lenders, we assume, will be reassured by high or rising rankings).