It’s key performance indicator time for the Office for Students. If you are new to this, the regulator sets its own standards based on metrics it chooses, collects and presents. All good stuff.

The Office for Students value for money student survey (KPM9A) is one of the strangest entries in this particular catalogue. Every year, the regulator commissions a survey of a small sample (782 this year) of UK undergraduate students in England, apparently unweighted (at least – no weighting information is provided). I’d love to tell you who did the polling, and if they are a reputable company – we are not told.

The only question we ever get responses for is “Considering the costs and benefits of university, do you think it offers good value for money?”. For what it is worth, this year 60 per cent of respondents said “yes” – the highest on record.

Meanwhile, two NSS measures (KPM4 and KPM9B) largely duplicate each other (the first uses three vaguely quality related themes, the second adds two more). Both are broadly stable on last year, both are limited by the absence of a longer time series (the 2017-2022 measures based on the old NSS are on another tab)

What happens to students studying at providers that exit the market? KPM10 tells us that in 2021-22 an impressive 94.4 per cent of them are studying a qualification at the same level with another provider. However, no students were affected by a disorderly provider exit in 2022-23 or 2023-24. It appears that non-disorderly exists don’t count.

The 2023-24 academic year saw the addition of two mandatory OfS data and information returns, putting the total for Approved (fee cap) providers – including ESFA and HESA returns – between 6 and 18. The new ones were the student unions’ return (needed, at the time, to support compliance with Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act) and reporting for teaching capital funding monitoring.

Each provider registered with the Office for Students paid an average of £18.61 per student for regulation. This – according to KPM11 – is the lowest on record, falling from a high of £22.42 in 2019. You’d think that would be unequivocally good news, until you realise that earlier years have been adjusted by inflation to 2022-23 prices. Yes, just like fee income is meant to be.

The real 2019-20 value was £19.91, the real 2020-21 value was £19.70. It’s not a vast difference, so it is difficult to understand what we add from an inflation-adjusted comparator other than a reminder that although fees are meant to rise by inflation they have tended not to.