The Office for Students has closed its register to new providers so staff can prioritise “severe pressures” facing existing higher education institutions.
The higher education regulator has also paused awarding any more institutions with degree awarding powers and will not process applications for a university title. These changes will be in effect until August 2025.
There are 18 providers whose applications to join the OfS register are in the early stages and have now been paused. And there are 20 providers hoping for degree awarding powers whose applications have been put on ice.
Degree awarding power applications for a further 17 providers that are already in progress will continue. There were no new applications for a university title at the time the pause was announced.
The OfS did not clarify which institutions have been impacted when asked, but they will include providers hoping to grow or expand into higher education provision and could include colleges wishing to gain or extend their degree awarding powers.
The OfS said affected providers have been notified.
Providers with time-limited degree awarding powers that lapse during the pause will have them extended, an OfS spokesperson told FE Week.
Phillipa Pickford, director of regulation at the OfS, said the regulator was prioritising its resources on protecting the interests of students in financially at risk providers.
Pickford said: “These are extremely difficult decisions and not ones the OfS has taken lightly. But our recent financial sustainability update provided evidence of the severe pressures facing the sector, and we need to prioritise our finite resources on this important issue.
“Today’s announcement will allow us to maximise the time our staff spend working closely with institutions at risk to ensure the interests of students are protected.”
This unprecedented step follows new analysis of higher education providers’ financial and student recruitment projections indicating that up to 72 per cent could be in deficit in 2025-26.
The OfS said small, medium and specialist providers are more likely to be struggling the most financially and it is these types of providers that would typically be seeking registration and/or degree awarding powers from the regulator.
Pickford added: “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.”
A body representing independent higher education providers has urged ministers to intervene, accusing the OfS of directly jeopardising the financial sustainability of some of its members, and “prioritising one set of students’ interests over another”.
Alex Proudfood, chief executive of Independent Higher Education, said: “It is unacceptable that the OfS Board believes it can simply disapply its statutory duties as determined by Parliament, and we urge minister to remind them of their clear commitments under the higher education and research act.
“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.”
Apprenticeship training provider Multiverse hit the headlines in 2022 for becoming the first apprenticeship-only provider to be granted powers to award its own bachelor’s degrees until December 2025. Last year, college group NCG became the first FE institution to be awarded permanent degree awarding powers.
So you can’t do what you have been set up to do so you will just do what you want to do!
The new government should now reverse the ridiculous earlier decision to remove OFSTED from inspection of the Advance Learner Loans undertaken by Colleges and ITP’s to replace it with the OFS. if the OFS cant cope with what it is doing now, how will it cope with a significant increase in number of applications required to be processed as the deadline date for the change approaches.
Alternatively if this was a cunning plan to stop Colleges and ITP’s competing with the Universities by accessing Advance Learner Loans, then it wasn’t a very subtle one!