Fear leads to doubt which keeps you in the same situation that you have always been in.

But when we realise that fear is part of our progress, then we overcome doubt and treat fear as a challenge — the key is to face it and conquer it – this will lead you to achieve your dreams.

For Omar Ballan, it was Oxford Business College (OBC) that taught him that.

Earlier this week, the Office for Students (OfS) published a Regulatory case report into OBC.

This was one of the providers that featured heavily in the Sunday Times work on franchising earlier in the year, and took centre stage in the New York Times coverage on the issue back in 2023.

Don’t get too excited. The report is only 280 words long.

During the process of its registration application, OfS says that multiple allegations were received from the Department for Education (DfE), the Student Loans Company (SLC), and “other entities” raising concerns about student authenticity, English proficiency, attendance, academic misconduct, and institutional governance.

These concerns “significantly questioned” OBC’s ability to meet registration conditions, particularly regarding quality, standards, and management. But while further enquiries were ongoing, OBC withdrew its application before any regulatory conclusions were made.

So the case was officially closed on 28 March 2025, and the 280 words are being published “to be transparent with the public”.

Hmm. When DfE removed student finance designation for OBC back in April, OfS listed five providers as being involved at some stage or other with OBC via franchising – Buckinghamshire New University, Ravensbourne University London, Newcastle College Group, New College Durham and the University of West London.

We might therefore have expected there to be some mention of those lead providers in the report – some sense that, given they got the student finance dosh first from SLC, that they are also being looked at in the context of allegations surrounding student authenticity, English proficiency, attendance, academic misconduct, and institutional governance. You know, to be transparent with the public and all that.

Not a word.

OBC is now only listing one programme on its website – a “Foundation Programme” that “could” place you in the first year of an undergraduate degree course in the UK – all for the bargain price of £22,500 for 12 months.

The programme is “ideally suited for international students”, although it’s not immediately clear how international students would get a visa – it’s not as if OBC is on the Register of Student sponsors.

The classical Christian liberal arts tradition

It’s not all bad news in Oxford. Joining the raft of exciting innovators that have begun delivering higher education in England since Jo Johnson’s Byron Burgers reforms in 2017 will soon be a “bold and prayerful initiative” in the Oxford area.

At a time when many institutions seem to be crumbling, “succumbing to the weight of secular ideologies”, it says here that this October, Selden College will open its doors to its first cohort of students:

…young men and women who will be formed not only in academic excellence but in Christian virtue, worship, and wisdom at university level.

Unlike many Christian colleges already in existence that focus solely on theology or ministry, Selden will offer a broad, rigorous curriculum rooted in the “classical Christian liberal arts tradition”, covering a wider range of subjects.

Students will study not only theology and classical languages, but history, literature, law, and philosophy – all “illuminated by the light of Scripture”. As the college’s motto states,

The entrance of your words brings light.

The founding Principal will be Dr Timothy Edwards D.Phil (Oxon), former Academic Dean & Fellow of Theology and Hebrew at New Saint Andrews College (NSAC), a Christian Liberal Arts college in Idaho, USA. And its vision is clear – to:

…glorify God in the arena of higher education and to prepare faithful Christian leaders for family, church, and nation.

The website says that staff will model Christian scholarship, integrating faith and learning in every subject. Worship, hospitality, mentorship, and sung Psalms will be woven into the fabric of daily life for the students and lecturers. This, it says, will be quite different from a “normal” university experience.

On one level you’ve got to admire the ambition that it’ll be able to register with OfS that quickly – especially given that OfS won’t reopen its register for applications until August, and we don’t yet know what the souped-up rules will be for that registration.

But on another level, it’s worth looking at NSAC. Back in 2021, the Guardian published an investigation highlighting the growing influence of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and its affiliated institution NSAC.

The report detailed how NSAC was deeply tied to a network of businesses, churches, and schools controlled by Christ Church’s founder and pastor, Douglas Wilson, a figure known for his ultra-conservative and theocratic beliefs.

It said that in 2005, Douglas Wilson advocated for leniency for Stephen Sitler, a former NSAC student convicted of child sex offenses, and later officiated his wedding within the church – a decision that caused widespread criticism.

The college’s public image suffered further when Joe Rigney, an ally of Wilson and new president of Bethlehem College and Seminary, appeared on Wilson’s show Man Rampant, prompting staff resignations over concerns about Wilson’s teachings on masculinity and authority.

A local backlash followed an NSAC advertisement viewed as transphobic, intensifying criticism of the college’s cultural positions. It also said that NSAC played a role in spreading anti-mask and anti-vaccine rhetoric during the pandemic.

Later in 2021, Vice carried testimonies like that of “Jean” (a pseudonym), who described being coerced into marriage and subjected to repeated marital rape by a Christ Church member while attending NSAC.

Jean was said to have been told that a wife could not refuse her husband, discouraged from going to the police, and ultimately excommunicated when she left the marriage. It alleged that NSAC exists within a tightly controlled religious ecosystem where spiritual authority and institutional loyalty are leveraged to silence dissent and protect leadership.

Faithful Christian men and women

Presumably prepping up for OfS registration, Selden College has a page of policies online already – there’s a Fees Policy, some Student Disciplinary and Complaint Procedures, a Refund and Compensation Policy and Bursary Fund Policy.

And there’s also a Statement of Beliefs which will be an occupational requirement – all staff will have to subscribe to the historic teachings and practices of this bit of reformed Christian faith.

The statement is quite the thing. It explicitly rejects evolutionary theory, insisting that God created all animal kinds directly and that Adam and Eve were a “special creation”.

Gender is framed as binary and immutable, with male and female described as “distinct, complementary,” signalling a complementarian stance that typically limits women’s leadership roles and rejects transgender identities.

It also defines marriage exclusively as between one man and one woman, rules out any sexual intimacy outside that context, and adopts an uncompromising pro-life position from conception to natural death.

There’s also assertions of biblical inerrancy, church discipline, and the supremacy of Reformed confessions.

For students, the college will recognise that they will be coming from a variety of different church backgrounds and so:

…the confessional unity of the student body will be broader than that of the college’s faculty, staff and board.

Students do not have to be Reformed to attend Selden College – but they do need to be professing, orthodox Christians:

All students, therefore, need to be able, in good conscience, to sign the student Statement of Faith.

That actually reinforces and sharpens many of the same theological and cultural positions – while also outlining a behavioural code that closely polices conformity, not just in belief but in lifestyle, community engagement, and personal conduct.

At the doctrinal level, the early points are conventional in Trinitarian Christianity – belief in the triune God, creation ex nihilo, the full divinity and humanity of Christ, and salvation by grace through faith.

But there’s also the belief that “agonistic death” entered the world only through Adam’s sin, there’s the strict binary of “male or female” as immutable, the rejection of any sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage, a rigid complementarian and anti-LGBTQ+ stance, and a section on the sanctity of life that signals an unequivocally anti-abortion and possibly anti-assisted-dying position.

And the beliefs are not just doctrinal – they are enforceable. Students are told that if they come to differ “substantively” from these views, they must inform the college and “offer to withdraw” for reasons of “integrity.”

Then the code of conduct and “personal holiness” section deepens it all by criminalising a list of “misconduct” behaviours – including sexual immorality (undefined but likely broad), drug use, and “overt disrespect.”

It reads less like a statement of Christian belief and more like a blueprint for a tightly governed, culturally separatist community.

Not as unlikely as it sounds

It may well all come to nothing – it’s certainly hard to see how much of the material published so far would be compatible with OfS’ regulatory framework, although to the extent to which the material represents a seat of protected beliefs under the Equality Act 2010, there will doubtless be some expensive lawyers (paid for by current providers’ OfS fees) thinking about how to respond.

But it’s not as if OfS doesn’t already have some controversial providers on its register. Moorlands College in Dorset (which received over £1 million in fee income and £27,631 in OfS grant funding in 2024) says that its charitable objective is maintaining and advancing:

…the Christian religion by the conduct of a college or colleges for the study and teaching of the Bible.

Birmingham Christian College, a subsidiary of the Church of Pentecost, exists primarily to:

promote the advancement of the Christian faith… by spreading the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

A deleted page on Moorlands’ website made their priorities clear:

Discipleship is at the centre of the College’s vision. We long to see our students’ commitment to Jesus and love for God and people deepen and strengthen through their time at the College.

Christ the Redeemer College, which is owned and operated by the Redeemed Christian Church of God, states its governing objects are:

To advance the Christian Faith by establishing and maintaining a Bible training institution based solely on the Christian doctrines, principles and faith as set out in the Statement of Faith.

Last year an ad for a staff member at Moorlands College openly declared:

There is an Occupational Requirement for candidates to be a Christian and to be in complete agreement with Moorlands College’s Statement of Faith.

And its Expectations of Conduct document for students stated that all students have to:

…function within the framework of the College as it seeks to live out the commitments expressed in the College’s statement of faith”

That statement of faith includes belief in:

…the supreme authority of the Old and New Testament Scripture.

The National Secular Society argues that many of these providers call themselves colleges:

…but are actually churches… governed by pastors whose primary loyalty is to the church and its beliefs, not to education.

Last year it said that it had reported 12 providers on the register to OfS on the basis that they were in breach of the Public Interest Governance Principles on free speech and academic freedom.

But unlike over Sussex, no investigations have been announced and no fines imposed. For the NSS, the implications are profound:

The fact that the OfS is now refusing to deregister, or even comment on, these organisations is tantamount to institutional failure. Perhaps the OfS has continued to award millions of pounds of public funds to these churches and their colleges over the past seven years because it is afraid to admit it has made a mistake.

And when it comes to freedom of speech:

It is patently absurd to fine the University of Sussex for restricting freedom of speech in an internal policy document which could readily have been amended, while ignoring Bible colleges, whose foundation governing documents explicitly place a blanket restriction on freedom of speech and academic freedom.