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In this edition of the bottom line, we're looking at the business of universities.

Hello and welcome to the programme.

We're looking at universities today.

In England, at least, they've been straddling a line between public service and commercial business.

Now, after many years of

expansion, there's a sense that the higher education sector may have overreached itself.

Charged too much to its customers, expanded too far, borrowed too much, paid its chief executives too

highly, and that it now potentially faces a reckoning of some kind.

So is that what we're about to see?

And if we are, do we know which rules apply in higher education?

The brutal capitalism that confronts private industries, like retailing, for example,

or the gentler subsidised, protected version that exists in the public sector?

That is our topic today.

We have lots to discuss. Let's meet my guests, two of whom are vice-chancellors of English

universities. First of all, Professor Nick Petford, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Northampton.

Just give us a few basics about university, Nick.

Evan, well, the University of Northampton is one of the newest universities in the UK.

It received Privy Council approval to run talk degrees in 2005, so we're 13 years old now.

But there is an ancient version, so if we could go back in time to 1265, there were three universities in England, Oxford, Cambridge and Northampton.

I bet you use that on the road a great deal. So just give us the size of the operation that you're in charge of.

We're about 16,000 students, UK international, with maybe 3,000 or 4,000 offshore on various franchise and licensing agreements around the world, 3,000 staff as headcounts. Turnover? About 150 million. So it's a £150 million business. Exactly. Do you think of it as a business or a public service? It's a business. Really? You're very clear about that. We're a business, but we're a not-for-profit business. In fact, as described of the Office for National Statistics, that's what all publicly funded universities are in the UK. We're not public sector. We're private, not-for-profit. Yeah, that's right. You are classified as the government doesn't completely run you. Let me introduce my second Vice-Chancellor, Professor Trevor McMillill, Vice-Chancellor of Keel University. Same

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