Financial sustainability remains one of the defining challenges facing the higher education sector.
The Office for Students continues to identify it as a significant risk for the sector, with a substantial proportion of providers forecast to be in deficit without mitigating action. Across the sector, providers are making difficult decisions about course closures, staffing, mergers and institutional futures.
As a result, the sector has spent several years talking about how institutions should plan for and manage provider closure – but has spent much less time asking students what closure feels like.
Much of the conversation so far has been focused on regulation, mitigation, insolvency and student protection plans. The recent Education Select Committee inquiry highlighted the need to strengthen student protection in cases of provider failure and last year the OIA and SUMS published a framework and report to help providers plan for and manage closure and support institutional practice.
Whilst full institutional closures remain relatively rare, the impact of financial pressure is no longer an abstract risk and is already shaping the experience of students across the country. For some providers mergers, acquisitions or partnerships may provide an alternative to market exit and help secure students’ ability to complete their studies. But these can also create periods of significant change, often involving changes to courses, staffing and identity. The broader lessons from this research therefore extend beyond provider closures alone.
Closure is a process, not an event
Our report with SUMS published today asks a different question.
By speaking directly to students affected by provider and course closure, it explores what effective student protection looks and feels like from the perspective of those students who have been affected by it.
It shows that whilst the sector thinks about closure as an event, students tend to experience it as a process. This is a necessarily small qualitative study. Provider closures remain relatively uncommon, and students affected often move on geographically, professionally and emotionally. Some no longer use the contact details held by the OIA, whilst others did not wish to revisit their experience. However, the accounts we do have are extremely valuable. They represent one of the few opportunities to understand not only the immediate disruption of closure but its longer-term impact on students’ confidence, wellbeing and aspirations.
Early impact
We were struck by the emotional charge that remained years later.
Students described anger, distress and a lingering sense of being let down. For many, closure did not begin with the formal announcement. Instead, many described months of cancelled classes, staff turnover, and declining provision. By the time the provider closed, many already felt that their educational experience had deteriorated.
Communication emerged as one of the strongest influences shaping students’ experiences. Students spoke about confusing emails, learning of the closure through the media and not knowing who to turn to. Many felt they had been left to navigate the uncertainty themselves.
The effects lasted beyond completion of their studies. We heard about the embarrassment and lack of confidence in their qualification, which affected them following the closure. Students reported struggling to obtain references, as well as the breakdown in trust in HE and, in some cases, mental health challenges.
The impact was not felt equally by all students. Students from underrepresented backgrounds, international students and those with caring responsibilities can face additional barriers, making the consequences of closure more significant and, in some cases, making transfer to another provider more difficult.
Protection means more than completion
The students spoken to didn’t measure whether options put in place had worked by whether they eventually completed their studies, but instead remembered how uncertain they felt, and whether anyone seemed responsible for helping them navigate the situation and supporting them through such a significant disruption.
The research doesn’t underestimate the challenges for providers making difficult decisions, or those who step in to help, but demonstrates that the way the decisions are communicated, managed and supported can have a significant effect on the experience of individual students.
The report sets our recommendations for government, regulators, providers and the wider sector, drawing on these experiences to identify practical ways to strengthen student protection and reduce harm.
Student protection shouldn’t just focus on getting students to completion – it should be about reducing the harm caused along the way. By listening carefully to students who have experienced closure, we have an opportunity to improve the impact, strengthen protection, and reduce harm to students in the future.
