Increasing involvement of private finance in the higher education sector will have important consequences for academic institutions in the UK

Changes in higher education policy are altering the way academic institutions are functioning in Britain. Andrew McGettigan takes a look at the implications of new funding mechanisms for higher education and writes that new methods of debt issuance will increase the financial fragility of academic institutions. Furthermore, due to the increase in students accessing loans, governments will soon be forced to find new policy options to maintain the new market in undergraduate study.