England is bringing large franchise partners under direct regulation. Every university that lends out its name should ask the question hotel groups asked decades ago.

The number of students taught through franchised providers in England has more than doubled in five years, and most of them are at providers the Office for Students doesn’t directly regulate. Completion rates at those providers are around three in four, against nearly nine in ten elsewhere in the sector. In 2024, the Public Accounts Committee reported that some lead universities kept between 12.5% and 30% of the tuition fees for courses their partners delivered, and the National Audit Office had already warned of fraud in parts of franchised provision.

The government is now acting. Franchise partners with 300 or more students will have to register with the OfS and meet the same standards as universities, or lose access to student loan funding from 2028/29. The international student levy adds another reason to pay attention, because it will be charged to the registered university for international students on franchised provision too.

Most of the discussion is about compliance. I think the bigger question is about brand.

Franchising is brand licensing

When a university franchises a course, it’s lending its name to someone else’s classroom. The student’s certificate, the LinkedIn profile and, if something goes wrong, the newspaper headline all carry the university’s name. The partner’s name rarely appears at all.

Other sectors worked this out a long time ago. Hotel groups, restaurant chains and car manufacturers all let other businesses deliver experiences under their brands, and the good ones protect those brands fiercely. They set standards, they inspect against them, they see the customer feedback, and they’re prepared to walk away from a partner who doesn’t meet them. A five-star hotel brand that couldn’t tell you what was happening in its franchised properties would be in serious trouble.

Too many university franchise arrangements have been managed as income lines, with the brand risk sitting quietly in the background. Regulation will force some of that into the open. The universities that get ahead of it will be the ones that start treating their name as the asset being licensed.

Your partner’s classroom is your brand, whether or not your logo is on the door.

Three tests for any partner carrying your name

Would you be comfortable with scrutiny? Imagine a journalist, a regulator or a prospective student’s parent spending a day with your partner. If the answer makes you uneasy, that’s the risk you’re already carrying.

Do you see their data as quickly as your own? Complaints, continuation, completion and graduate outcomes from partner provision should reach the same people, at the same speed, as the university’s own figures. If they arrive late or not at all, you’re managing your brand blind.

Is there an exit you’d actually use? Every licensing arrangement worth having includes standards the partner must meet and a clear, practical route out if they don’t. A clause nobody would ever trigger isn’t protection.

The opportunity

Done well, partnerships extend a university’s reach to students it would never otherwise teach, and that’s worth protecting. The universities that review their franchise arrangements as brand decisions now, before the regulator does it for them, will keep the good partnerships and end the risky ones on their own terms.

I’ll be exploring what other sectors can teach universities about protecting a brand on Season 2 of the podcast. It’s one of the clearest cases I know of where the answer already exists outside higher education.

Jonathan Sabarre FCIM MBA is Principal Consultant at QS Quacquarelli Symonds, a keynote speaker and host of Marketing Greats in Higher Education. Get the weekly email or invite him to speak.