Universities in the UK have a long and illustrious history. The earliest were established in the Middle Ages, with the first period of growth taking place in the 19th century. By 1918, there were 22 universities and university colleges, providing university education to a small and elite percentage of the population.

The number of universities increased throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reaching a total of 47 by the mid 1980s. But it is in the last 20 years that the university sector in the UK has changed out of all recognition. In 1992, government legislation enabled polytechnics to become universities and the number of universities in the UK grew rapidly.

Today, there are 171 higher education institutions in the UK. This figure encompasses 90 universities, the various university institutions and some 56 higher education colleges. Between them, they teach a range of subjects from the familiar, traditional degrees such as English, Classics, Philosophy and Mathematics to new degrees with a vocational focus such as Surf Science and Technology, Retail Management and Golf Tourism.

Universities and higher education institutions are one of the country’s biggest employers, with a workforce of some 300,000 people. We have nearly two million students studying either full or part-time. Of that number, less than half (46%) are studying full-time for their first degree. More than half (55.8%) are female, while 11.6% of all students are from overseas.
Universities in the UK have diverse backgrounds, legal status and constitutional arrangements. While partly funded by the state, they are autonomous bodies with charitable status, which allows a number of tax exemptions. They do share certain characteristics, however. They are all legally independent corporate institutions, accountable through a governing body for all aspects of the institution, including funds received from government, monitoring performance, staffing, strategic planning, estate management and health and safety.

Universities UK is the membership body representing the interests of all the universities in Britain, including Northern Ireland, through the executive heads of the universities. We have 121 members, rather more than the number of universities in the UK because we have in membership each of the heads of the constituent colleges of the federal universities of London and Wales, colleges which are the size of the average British university.
All our members’ institutions have the power to award degrees on the basis of either a programme of study that is taught or a programme of research (the two key, different, legal degree awarding powers for British institutions) and to engage in research.

Our sister organisation, the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP), similarly represents the colleges of higher education and has around 40 members, of which five have the power to award degrees on the basis of a programme of study which does not involve research. These are the university colleges. The other members of SCOP rely on the authority of a university for the degrees which their students receive.
It is also possible for students to study for the degree of a University or University College in or through other institutions that are devoted mainly to lower level or professional qualifications (further education colleges) under collaborative arrangements that will be familiar to many in the US.

The main difference is that students completing such degree programmes receive awards of a similar standard to those in the collaborating university or university college, and that the UK takes care to underpin the same threshold standards of its degree across all institutions. External review is carried out by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which produces public reports (www.qaa.ac.uk).

British higher education delivers an efficient, focused experience to its students, over a huge range of disciplines and levels and modes of study. This is all done under a framework for qualifications, including specifications of their broad disciplinary character (“subject benchmarking statements”), which is intended to place each institution’s degree in relation to others and to ensure comparability and threshold standards.

Students’ performance in their degree examinations and assessments is measured by an Honours Classification system (first class, upper and lower second class, third class, pass, ie non-Honours), but institutions are increasingly providing transcripts that show performance in individual final papers or modules and other assessment tasks. The framework supports this with a system of programme specifications that is still being developed, but which sets out what students can choose from the options available within permitted pathways. This specification also places the programme within the qualifications framework and relates it to relevant subject benchmarking statements. Many, but not all, institutions operate credit accumulation systems and some transfer between institutions is possible.

This scheme provides for degrees with similar content to be compared on a like-for-like basis and ensures that a degree of a given content/disciplinary mix with a particular class is of broadly the same level of intellectual challenge wherever the student has studied or been examined. Britain has a selective system of entry to degree programmes, at undergraduate and at post-graduate level and admission is not automatic. Students who are able to study full-time normally study in an institution that is not local to their parents’ home. Others study part-time in their local Higher Education (HE) institution, or in a further education college under supervision of a university or university college, or through one of our distance learning institutions, the two oldest being the London University Extra-Mural Department and the Open University.

Applications for undergraduate programmes are mainly made through a central agency (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service: www.ucas.ac.uk), but admission decisions are made locally in each separate institution. Postgraduate programmes recruit directly, but our HE Central Services Unit (for careers service support) provides listings of programmes on offer with summary details and links and is the ideal channel for business seeking graduates at all levels.
There are differences in Scotland, where students are prepared for university entrance through an educational system in which they take “Highers” a year earlier than English and Welsh students sit their Advanced Level exams. On entry to Scottish institutions, students take one year longer to complete their degree.
After the first, Bachelors, degree, one in five students goes on – either at once or after a year or two – to take a further, Masters, degree over a year full-time or more part-time.

Many employers encourage their graduates to do this. This is very efficient, but demanding – the programmes assume a high level of preparation through the first degree and/or practical experience and run intensively for 45 weeks of the year, usually including a substantial dissertation that students are expected to complete with relatively light supervision. It is an ideal way to get right up-to-date in a discipline and a good jumping-off point for those who wish to do research.
A smaller number move then (or exceptionally directly from the Bachelors degree) to the doctorate, especially the British PhD, a degree gained solely on the basis of the examination of a substantial thesis that reports the student’s original research. American readers may be surprised at the stress in the programmes leading to the PhD on supervised work: there is not much teaching in these programmes after some basic introduction to the methods of research, possibly through a dedicated MRes one-year degree. Other forms of doctoral programme also exist, but the PhD remains the dominant doctorate. Typically, a PhD is completed within four years full-time, but in many disciplines a part-time programme may be followed. UK universities generally are keen to work with business on these programmes where there are shared objectives.

After they have graduated with their first Bachelors degree, one in five students goes on to take a further Masters degree

All UK universities and colleges engage in research, pure or applied, to some extent, most with comparatively modest resources. A few universities have research income comparable with their teaching income, and these are all heavily involved in medical research with a mixture of government, industry and charity funding. Some of them are major players in other scientific research and in engineering and technology development, and spin-off companies are now a major interest and comparative success in the science and technology areas.

All are active in technology transfer and most in business education at the undergraduate and at the postgraduate level. Most institutions have a professional Industry Liaison Officer, who will be a member of the Association of University Research and Industrial Links (www.auril.org.uk), which maintains a university technology directory.
Britain has a wide range of business schools, many accredited by the Association of MBAs (www.mba.org.uk), which lists them with commentary. The London Business School is, of course, world-famous.
The UK’s higher education system is extremely strong on both innovation and quality. Key findings from Britain’s Higher Education Business Interaction Survey this year, for example, show:

• There were 199 spin-off firms in 1999/2000, compared to 338 in the previous five years
• The proportion of HEI research income from business was 12.3% in 1999/2000, up from 10.9% in 1995/6
• Total patents filed increased by 22% from 1,259 in 1998/9 to 1,534 in 1999/2000
• By comparison with North America, in 1999/2000, UK universities identified one spin-off firm for every £8.6m of research expenditure, Canadian universities in 1999 spun off one firm for every £13.9m, while in the US the ratio was one for every $53.1m
• More than 90% of institutions employed specialist staff to support commercial work
• Half offered incubation or “start-up” facilities and 70% had access to “seed corn” investment

Britain is part of Europe, and has signed the Bologna Agreement, which commits it, with 40 other nations in the European area, to developing a common framework for degree structures across Europe. In general, what is emerging from the Bologna Process, which aims to have commonality and “readability” of degrees across national boundaries in place by 2010, is similar to the Scottish model and so far broadly consistent with the approach adopted to quality and standards in Britain.
Increasingly, programmes on the continent of Europe are being taught in English and great efforts are being made, notably through financing of initiatives by the Commission of the European Union, to ensure that students can take a degree in more than one European country.

The new approach will encourage credit accumulation and transfer under a common format now being developed from an existing transfer mechanism.

Over the coming years this has the potential to help businesses which have an international focus and operate in more than one country this side of the Atlantic to get their employees through university programmes, for example on a part-time basis, while they are mobile around the continent.

Universities UK is the representative body for the executive heads of all UK universities. It works to advance the interests of universities and to spread good practice throughout the higher education sector.