More Porter Vice Chancellor? (1)

In this first of a series of posts about competition in Higher Education I rehearse Michael Porter's 5 Forces model in an attempt to try to understand competition - or the illusion of competition in Higher Education.  My focus is on the UK, long held to provide the benchmark of Higher Education (largely by itself) but without clear analysis Universities risk stumbling into strategic futures that they are unprepared for.

after M.E.Porter (1979)

In Porter's industry model the four external forces are threats or measures of power - Threat of new entrants, Threat of Substitutes, Bargaining power of buyers and suppliers.  Each force can impact the nature of competition within an industry and add to internal factors that indicate how players jockey for position within the sector (rivalry).

So, for UK Higher Education:

• What barriers exist to keep out unwanted competition in the form of new entrants?
• How much power do buyers (and who, exactly are they?) actually have?
• How much power do suppliers (and again, who are they?) have?
• What substitutes exist - other than that suggested by Derek Bok (Harvard): "If you think education is expensive - try ignorance".
• How do Universities play out the rivalry between themselves - with some fees effectively fixed at below cost and some above it?

In my next post about this I will explore the Threat of entry - how worried should Porter imbibing VCs be?