Alex Proudfoot, Chief Executive of Independent Higher Education (IHE), said:
"Collaboration is the life blood of higher education, and subcontractual partnerships have underpinned the expansion of the sector as an engine of innovation and access. For decades now they have made new courses and new delivery models available where they would not otherwise exist, doing the heavy lifting in widening participation by making higher education more flexible and accessible to students who cannot attend a campus full time.
"We are pleased that the Government has listened to our advice to protect the smallest specialist institutions as well as preserve the ability of new providers to start out under the wing of an established partner. But the threshold for registration has been set too low and we see no evidence yet that the Office for Students is willing or able to adapt its regulatory approach to be effective and impose a proportionate burden for such small providers.
"The OfS has to regulate the sector as it is, not the sector as it wishes it to be. The majority of the OfS register already comprises providers with fewer than 500 students, but there has been no serious effort from the regulator to grapple with the implications of this fact. They urgently need a reality check and to undertake modelling of the budgets and staffing available to a provider teaching 300 students, followed by clear guidance on meeting their responsibilities and a recalibration of burden against risk.
"Our members will also rightly be concerned about the capacity of the OfS to register so many additional providers in a timely manner given their slow progress in clearing the existing backlog. We welcome the Government's confirmation that all providers who apply by July will have their funding protected while undergoing the process, but it will not be good enough simply to leave them and their students in limbo potentially for years at the current rate of decision making.
"The real and substantial risk to academic standards and public money identified by the NAO and others exists in a very small number of fast-growing franchised providers, and it is here that investigations and enforcement should be concentrated. This includes providers who are already registered with OfS, so it is clear that registration alone will not be a panacea. There is also no reason why providers teaching full programmes to thousands of students a year should not invest in their own academic infrastructure sufficiently to support transitioning from a franchised to a validated model.
"We welcome the regulator's recent focus on holding lead providers to account, because where rapid growth has led to poor student outcomes, it has happened on a university's watch. It is of paramount importance that universities 'know their partner' and only work with fit and proper individuals with a credible commitment to quality and student support. The OfS should help by putting in place a toughened-up and universal due diligence process for all providers operating independently or under subcontract, so that the public and potential partners can be assured of their bona fides."