Building Partnerships

We are always open to discussing new opportunities, so do please contact us by completing our enquiry form. However, please do be aware that our strategy is to have long term, large scale partnerships and that we are always looking for a good strategic fit to ensure that partnerships are of real benefit both to you and your organisation as well as to the University. Partnerships that favour local teaching at your Centre for some of the programme followed by a period of study at Bolton are attractive to us. We do also have strategic subject areas where we see partnerships as bringing additional expertise to the University to supplement and add strength to our own Academic Schools and Faculties. Finally, we do recognise that there are a finite number of partnerships that as an institution we can support in a sustainable manner. Therefore, we favour partnerships with a scale and size to fit with our 'fewer larger' partnership strategy. If in doubt, do put in an Enquiry and we will be only too happy to have a conversation to see if we can find a mutually beneficial solution.

We have a simple model. There is a small upfront cost to approve the partnership and each additional programme. This is designed simply to cover the fixed cost to the University of organising the approval work and paying an approval panel, as well as initial work with you to set the programmes up. After that we agree a percentage of the student fee (according to how much of the teaching/management/oversight you do as partners, and how much we do as the University). We also agree on a minimum number of students for each intake and you would need to pay the University that minimum even if a programme was operated with fewer students, This would all be discussed during the preparation and approval phase of setting up the partnership.

Local staff can be approved and this is our favoured model. We can also agree training for local staff from a short 'preparing to teach' programme to full teaching degree. Partner staff receive a discount for teacher training. To approve your own teaching staff a CV and form is sent to the University. Normally staff must be qualified to a level above that which they are to teach (for example to teach on a msters programme, normally staff would have a PhD). Occasioanlly we do have partnerships where University lecturers travel to teach on modules. This is often at Masters level (MSc, MBA for example).

Early in our discussions about the partnership, we would conduct a Due Diligence exercise (We call it PIAO - Partnership Initial Assessment of Operations). There we look to check that your organisation has stable financial standing, all the licenses and legal standing, that you have the required systems and processes, staff and physical resources in place - or the willingness to put them in place prior to launch. So staff that can teach the programmes, administrative and student support staff, classrooms, laboratories, computer laboratories, library etc., appropriate to the programme. We always like to check any latest internal or external audits that you have undertaken.

That depends on the nature of the partnership. A straightforward partnership, where you are looking for a franchise of our 'off the shelf' programmes, where you are an experienced partner used to working with UK Higher Education with all the systems in place including the Due Diligence requirements, can be relatively quick to approve. There is a University approval process which can take six months or so from initial enquiry to programme launch. More complex projects, especially those where both the university as well as the partner need to build new expertise and/or manage larger perceived risk, can take longer. But we would always prefer to put in time and effort up-front to ensure a smoother longer-term partnership going forwards.

That depends. It can work either way. Normally the partner collects the fee, and are authorised to issue offers to students (subject to University approval and/or oversight). But partnerships can be arranged whereby the student applies directly to the University (specifying your partner location), and we issue the student offer and collect the fee - this can be discussed.