OfS temporarily closes entry to the register
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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This closure will affect currently live and planned future applications for registration, for university title (including name changes), and for degree awarding powers (DAPs) – with those with requests already in the system currently being told that all applications are “paused” until August 2025.
This means that no provider will be able to join, or change status on, the register – putting providers with existing plans (however far advanced) to join the register, change name, or seek degree awarding powers at a significant disadvantage as they plan for the year ahead.
OfS says these temporary restrictions:
will allow the OfS to work more closely with institutions under significant financial pressure in order to protect the interests of students
The regulator has already expanded capacity in assessing financial sustainability by appointing financial consultants on 12 month contracts, and works with both KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers on provider financial assessments (two contracts, both valued at £80,000, for three months between 1 November and 31 January). It has received extra funding from the Department for Education to carry out this work.
Director for Regulation Phillipa Pickford said:
While we do not expect significant numbers of institutions to close in the immediate future, acting now allows us to intervene effectively at an early stage. Delaying this work would mean we miss a crucial window of opportunity to get ahead of a worsening financial situation for some institutions.
We recognise that these temporary changes come at a cost. Our decisions will have a direct impact on a small number of institutions that have recently submitted an application for registration or degree awarding powers and will have those applications paused. It will also affect those that may be intending to apply. But we must prioritise managing risks for students already in the system, ahead of the benefits that new institutions, or institutions with the ability to award their own qualifications, bring.
There’s a strongly worded response from Independent HE:
This decision will make OfS itself directly responsible for putting the sustainability of some institutions at risk – and not because of poor planning or the overoptimistic forecasting of unrealistic growth trajectories. If government policy has created a situation where the regulator feels that it cannot do the essential job it was given by parliament, then government should intervene to fix it – not allow the costs of this failure to be paid by those who did nothing to earn it.
OfS took on additional responsibilities to assess providers against registration criteria and degree awarding powers criteria (initially carried out by the Designated Quality Body) following a breakdown in the relationship between OfS and the Quality Assurance Agency. Work such as this puts a premium on staff with deep knowledge of the sector and experience of working closely with providers – and similar skills are now in demand as OfS takes on a new responsibility for sector financial sustainability under a new interim chair and new set of ministers.
Whereas the news is a welcome signal that OfS is taking financial sustainability at a provider level very seriously and is actively involved with discussions and planning at providers around the sector, it will come as a disappointment to those hoping for a speedy decision on registration or degree awarding powers – two sets of decisions that could have a significant positive impact on provider recruitment and thus finances.
As of the most recent set of board papers, dated October 2024, OfS was dealing with a total of 13 quality and standards investigations ahead of registration, and had seen a further 15 applications for registration since May 2024. Three of these reports were close to being finalised. At the same point 23 applications for degree awarding powers were open. It’s not clear how many university title applications are currently open.
Current regulatory documentation puts the minimum time that an applicant might expect OfS to need to make a decision on registration at 41 weeks. Time scales are not available for the DAPs process, but it is notable that just one OfS assessment report has been published since it took on these responsibilities.
OfS has attempted to justify this decision via their understanding of section 3(5) of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The regulator claims that applications need to be submitted in the “specified manner” and has determined that this phrase will now mean “not in the period between 26 November 2024 and 1 August 2025”.
Is there anything that the current leadership of the OfS has ever delivered on time or competently, ever, including the time they were at HEFCE? This dragging the sector down to a level of incompetence surely cannot continue.
Sadly, this issue isn’t only affecting the types of providers represented by IHE looking to enter the sector. It also affects those seeking teaching and research degree-awarding powers and name changes, the likes of which we represent at GuildHE. Some of our members submitted DAPs applications 7 months ago and are still considered “just having recently submitted,” which feels like a joke, while others were preparing to resubmit applications after taking onboard several rounds of inadequately specific feedback (over a period of years!) on what improvements were needed from institutions with research track records but which historically relied on having their research degrees validated by others. Another member has been waiting 2 years for approval of a name change that would make their brand and offer much clearer to students! We represent a raft of institutions with excellent and demonstrable experience in delivering high-quality education which are now (and have been for some time) arrested in their abilities to transform their offers or adjust their finances to respond to the broader pressures we all know. As Alex Proudfoot said very well, this decision (which feels inadequately tested for impact) is another of the thousand cuts that may indeed bring about some of the worst risks OFS purports to care about, all because of inadequate resource. We will work closely with IHE and others to continue to push for a reversal of this decision for those applications in the system already, at the bare minimum.
So basically they have seen some accounts, done some scenarios when University X, Y and Z miss international student targets by 10% and 20% in January and realise that they need to start working out what the lift raft looks like for students if they run out of cash.
That doesn’t mean X, Y and Z actually go under or do run out of cash but they cannot reconfigure on the spot in January if it happens or be capable of generating a comprehensive response on that timescale.
The bottom line of really what is behind this move is that
1 Many existing HE institutions have over expanded in terms of course numbers, student numbers and PPI projects as a result of Blair’s 50% to go to uni
2 As a result their incomes suddenly ballooning and a seeming never ending pool of students (home and foreign) – suddenly plateaued. They then saw cost curve accelerating faster than income. Bingo a crisis!
3 Some stories emerged of certain new unis providing an immigration route to the UK, rather than focussing on education and quality. This requires deeper scrutiny and research.
4. Lack of overall centralised good /logical scrutiny and analysis of overall educational demand, to ensure there was a match between the monies available centrally (via grants/student loans/central govt monies et al), and the demands of the economy and the students.
5 The unswerving belief of the UKs toff kakistocracy, that only academic education rather than vocational training was worthwhile. “mortar boards for all!”
What a mess – as on off shoot of this most once honourable trade colleges have been closed, FE sector has been tanked, adult education has all but vanished. Industry lacks skills, Joe Public still being duped into sending kids to uni. End result chaos and a student loan debt that will hobble the economy forever! QED
One connection I haven’t yet seen covered in Wonkhe or elsewhere (unless I have missed it – sorry) is between the moratorium on new OfS registrations and the DfE announcing that, post-September 2026, ‘…all providers wishing to offer LLE-funded provision will need to register with the OfS.’ If this means the age of subcontracting to unregistered providers is coming to an end, then demand for new registrations will jump. And then there is the yet-to-be-developed ‘third category’ of registration for providers offering level 4 and 5 qualifications (see the end of https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lifelong-learning-entitlement-lle-overview/lifelong-learning-entitlement-overview). In short, I fear demand for registration and OfS’s ability to facilitate it are moving in opposite directions, with dire consequences for many providers.