After Behan

I recently wrote about the Behan review of the Office for Students (OfS). Apart from leading not long after to Sir David becoming the new interim chair of the OfS Board the report itself (which was pretty hefty) does not seem to have had significant impact. This is surprising. Of course there is a lot of talk of the major financial challenges facing the sector and whether alternative funding arrangements can be implemented and this recent report in the Times for example suggests that tuition fees might be set to rise with inflation:

Tuition fees will rise in line with inflation and maintenance grants will be restored for the poorest students under government plans to bolster the finances of struggling universities.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has warned that the value of the tuition fee has been “eroded” because it has not risen in a “very long time”. She has said the system is the “worst of all worlds” and that she wants to change it as soon as possible.

The Times has been told that plans drawn up by officials would mean tuition fees, which have been frozen since 2017, rising by 13.5 per cent over the next five years to £10,500.

Poorer students would be shielded from the impact by the reintroduction of maintenance grants, which were worth up to £3,500 until they were abolished by the Conservatives in 2016.

A Whitehall source said there was a “live” discussion over the plans between ministers but emphasised that any decision would need to approved by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. Labour is looking to make an announcement before the government spending review in April next year.

That’s all potentially welcome news but it will be a long time before any additional income via this route reaches universities. There is an element missing here too in terms of short term financial challenges – there remains money to be saved from reducing the excesses of unnecessary and costly over-regulation.

It’s Real Money

As long as I can remember many inside and beyond the sector have said that seeking savings from cutting regulation is small beer, not really worth worrying about and there are bigger prizes in terms of funding. But at a time when every university in the land is looking at ways to make savings –  freezing posts, reducing travel, cutting conference attendance, minimising hospitality, rescheduling remedial maintenance etc – it is surely essential to look at the cost of avoidable and unnecessary regulation. Every pound saved on reducing the regulatory burden is a pound that can be invested in the student experience or sustaining research activity. The ending of the implementation of planned free speech legislation has delivered a very welcome change which will result in a meaningful saving for universities in England. That’s millions of pounds which do not have to be spent on unnecessary regulatory activity. However, at the same time as we see the departure of the free speech intervention there is additional OfS regulation arriving soon in the form of a new condition of registration requiring institutions to set out how they will continue to tackle harassment and sexual misconduct that affects their students. Universities will have to:

publish comprehensive information to explain to students how their institution is preventing harassment and sexual misconduct, how incidents that do happen can be reported, and what students should expect – and how they will be supported – during any subsequent investigation.

Whilst the issue is a vital one it remains debatable whether seeking to regulate in this way will achieve more than enhancing existing provisions through supplementary guidance. The regulatory approach will certainly be more costly.

I’ve gone about this a lot I know. But the reality is that the burden has grown hugely, in reach and cost. And universities need every penny they can save. I was therefore pleased to see a whole chapter in the recent UUK Blueprint dedicated to better regulation:

We need a thriving higher education and research sector to enable people to reach their potential, enrich our society and meet the challenges of the future. An effective regulatory framework and regulator are essential to this, if we are to uphold public and political trust and confidence in our universities.

The regulatory framework for England should be designed and operated in such a way that it supports – and where necessary requires – the higher education sector to meet society’s needs and ambitions. At a time of scarce resources, the sector and government must work together to achieve a more coordinated regulatory system in which the benefits of regulation exceed its costs.

The autonomy of universities is central to their success and should be maintained. However, this must be earned through effective governance and strong sector stewardship. The sector must demonstrate the quality of its offer as it adapts to the needs and wants of a changing society. This means being open to the scrutiny of regulation and acting on concerns.

There are many things to like in here and I’m sure I’ll be commenting further on it in due course. But for now it is important to stress the point about the benefits of regulation needing to exceed costs. At present the reverse is very much the case.

Taking Things Seriously

The recently published OfS report on issues at Regent College offers a strong warning for the sector though. The report represents a serious critique of provision at this institution, in terms of quality and standards. These are programmes which are franchised from well-established universities and, on the face of it, it looks like students are not getting outstanding value for money in terms of their educational and wider experience. DK has provided a handy summary of the issues raised.

For me this demonstrates that we absolutely have to ensure that regulatory interventions are directed at the areas of greatest risk. Any provision which is delivered at one remove, be that through a franchise or validated model, inevitably increases the risk to assurance of standards and quality and therefore requires greater scrutiny. Similarly, institutions with a very limited track record of delivering HE also have to be flagged as having a greater risk profile. This differentiation, between high and low risk institutions, will be critical to the redesign of the current regulatory regime. Finally, and this is where there remains a big concern about the absorption of quality and standards assurance by the OfS (as noted again in the UUK Blueprint), there is still no overt link between these reviews of provision and regulatory action. It may be happening behind the scenes but on the face of it we are presented with a pretty critical report on one institution’s quality and standards which appears to carry no regulatory consequences. This risks undermining confidence not just in the effectiveness of the regulatory system but in all HE provision.

So, there are plenty of warning signs here about the need to enhance the effectiveness of regulation at the same time as reducing the burden. 

The Hit List

I’ve written many times before on how the regulatory burden has grown consistently over the past 30 or so years and this trend has accelerated since the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act (HERA). During a period of growth costs could be absorbed by universities but this is no longer sustainable given current sever financial challenges.

A while back I wrote this piece which included a list of what I think continue to look like pretty reasonable ideas for addressing the problem. Drawing on this and other issues I would offer the following top 10 of changes to reduce the regulatory burden and save money:

• Remove the OfS B4 condition, requiring the retention of all assessed work (or an “appropriate” sample) for all students for five years post-graduation. (See this piece for a bit more detail.)
• End the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), which is a crude, blunt and costly instrument to achieve limited enhancements which should happen anyway.
• Reduce government interference in the routine operation of the framework and return to the previous norm of just a single letter a year from the Secretary of State setting out priorities for the regulator. 
• The OfS should follow the Regulators’ Code more closely rather than merely having ‘regard to’ it for policy matters. 
• Postpone the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise for at least several years, from 2029 to, say, 2033. Delay will have no negative impact on universities or their research and would mean the savings within the next five year period could therefore be of the order of £700m (allowing for cost inflation since the last REF).
• The Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) should be discontinued as it adds little value to the sector for a great deal of work.
• We have sector-developed self-regulation too and it really is time to end the External Examiner system which is no longer fit for purpose for our kind of mass system. 
• The burden of excessive and overlapping data collection from universities has to be addressed. This spans every aspect of university operations from estates to research and from student numbers to spin outs making it an extremely complicated and confusing landscape. 
• One other area of excessive self-generated internal regulation relates to implementation of Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) rules relating to course changes where some parts of university systems have become completely paralysed by a reluctance to make any changes at all.
• Removing universities from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act would reduce the excessive burden this imposes across institutions and would certainly deliver some savings of note. 

That’s a decent hit list to be getting on with. These would be meaningful and welcome steps and would enable universities to save money to invest in core activities at a time of significant financial challenge for the sector.

Better Regulation, not No Regulation

Some still suggest that what the sector really wants is total regulatory freedom, complete autonomy in terms of the assurance of standards and quality for every institution and no external intervention whatsoever. This is not the case and has not been seriously proposed by anyone for many decades. Besides, even if the OfS disappeared overnight (which it will not), there remains a broad range of other regulatory players, from PSRBs to OFSTED and from the OIA to the CMA, who will continue to regulate as before. The need for effective regulation is a fundamental feature of the HE landscape. At the moment though it is neither effective nor efficient though. What is to be hoped is that a combination of the Behan report, the UUK blueprint and rational government action will lead to a sensible, coherent and cost-effective regulatory regime for HE across the whole of the UK. We have a long way to go. 

 This article represents the personal views of the author