PhD by publication

About half the schools in the UK have this option. Normally, as people already mentioned, requires a connection with the school such as being a faculty member, alumni, etc. These programs are really meant for university staff so they can upgrade to a PhD. Also, it is not a shortcut, you are still required to write a dissertation based on the published articles and make a full story and defend it. You are normally required to pay at least one year of tuition most of the time.
You can check the University of Sunderland that has this option so you can get an idea on how this works:
https://www.sunderland.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/phd-published-work/

I tried this route several years ago and found few road block: Lack of supervisor that understands your work, lack of faculty that can understand your work for a defense, lack of availability of faculty, lack of interest of faculty if they feel that your publications are not in prestigious journals, etc. Too many road blocks.

I am not trying to be negative but there is not a single person in this discussion board that has been successful at this. The only exception is people that have gotten degrees from Latin America Countries like Nicaragua, Mexico and Costa Rica with the main concern of lack of prestige of the granting institutions.

If all you need is a PhD to qualify for a low paid adjunct job, some people have done this with a PhD from University of Central Nicaragua that seems to be feasible given some success stories.

If your friend is aiming for a tenure track with a PhD by publication, he or she will find several road blocks as bias due to distance learning perception as you never lived in the UK, short residence might be perceived as substandard, no transcript, PhD with the weird titles such as "Published works" that are hard to explain, etc. Not ideal for a tenure track that requires a conventional residence 5 year program.

 

Millenials are also called Gen Y.