Alex Proudfoot, Chief Executive of Independent Higher Education (IHE), said:
“We are deeply disappointed by the decision of the Office for Students today to suspend applications for registration and Degree Awarding Powers for the best part of a year. It is unacceptable that the OfS Board believes it can simply disapply its statutory duties as determined by Parliament, and we urge Ministers to remind them of their clear commitments under the Higher Education and Research Act.
“We have always believed that the first priority of the OfS should have been to bring as many providers as possible within its regulatory reach so that every student gets the benefits and protections promised for a regulated sector. Instead, as we set out in our evidence to the House of Lords inquiry last year, the hundreds of providers still left outside of the regulatory framework stand as a testament to its failure to achieve this. Now, after years of providers putting up with endless delays and spiralling costs caused by inefficient and unreliable processes, the regulator has apparently decided that it cannot provide the registration or DAPs functions at all.
“While the financial challenges of universities today are well publicised, and it is right that the regulator does all it can to protect students from any institutional closure, this cannot justify such transparent prioritisation of one set of students' interests over another. Given the significant and growing role that independent providers play in extending access to higher education to underrepresented groups, there is a real risk that this decision could lead to indirect discrimination and further breaches of the OfS's duties under the Equality Act.
“Our Members and others who are affected will be counting the cost of the news today, considering carefully the extent of damages caused and the likely impact on their students. Students will not be able to access maintenance loans and where applicable the Disabled Students Allowance. Carefully crafted plans will be torn up. Multimillion pound investments will be put at risk. Regulatory dysfunction has already placed significant financial strain on many providers, and more will now face the prospect of having wasted considerable staff resource and significant sums of money on preparing applications that will be out of date before they are allowed to submit them.
“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.
“We call on the OfS at a minimum to reverse its unjust decision to suspend the processing of applications already in progress, and to work urgently with IHE, other sector representatives and the Department for Education to find a different solution to their apparent resourcing crisis which will allow the resumption of critical regulatory processes as soon as possible.”