It’s Quiz Time. On or Off the Register?

Time for an exciting new quiz. Inspired by the imminent re-opening of the OfS Register to new entrants the aim of the quiz is to identify those institutions which are really on the Register and those which are just imposters. It really is that much fun.

May 23, 2025

3–4 minutes

Diversions, OfS, Quiz, Register

Exciting new quiz based on the Office for Students Register

Over the years I’ve done a series of utterly pointless and forgettable quizzes and rankings involving real and fake or fictional universities and colleges.

However, we’ve not done one for ages so it seemed time to annoy the heck out of everyone again.

This particular quiz is offered to mark (somewhat belatedly) that the Office for Students is to re-open its register to new applicants from August 2025.

Just a reminder of the exciting benefits offered by OfS Registration:

Under the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act (HERA), a higher education provider in England is required to register with the OfS if it wishes to:

access public grant funding (such as funding to support teaching), and/or student support funding (such as enabling students at a provider to access student finance)

apply to the Home Office for a student sponsor licence to recruit international students, or to maintain an existing licence. From 4 January 2021, the student sponsor licence has replaced the Tier 4 Sponsor licence as the route for providers to sponsor students who wish to study in the UK

apply for degree awarding powers in order to award their own degrees, and/or university title.

Providers can choose to apply to register in one of two categories:

Approved (fee cap)

Approved.

A provider may subsequently choose to apply to change its registration category.

Registering in each category therefore enables providers to do different things such as accessing public funding, apply to be allowed to recruit international students and apply for degree-awarding powers.

So the really simple premise is this. What follows is a collection of groups of names of institutions which may or may not be on the OfS Register. All you need to do is deploy your higher ed skill and judgement to identify the non-registered fake college or university in each group. Easy.

Just for the completists out there it is worth noting that a number of institutions have recently departed the register, some voluntarily, like the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama which apparently no longer wishes to access the benefits of OfS Registration, and others where de-registration was a little bit more compulsory. Anyway, at time of writing, all the real institutions listed below are still on the register.

The Conservatoire, which no longer wishes to benefit from registration

Once you have spotted all of these non-registered institutions then you simply need to take the first letter of each and rearrange them into the name of a well-known fictional HEI, a much loved but entirely made up university.

If you achieve this successful outcome then email me and I’ll put your name in the hat with all of the other high-achieving and time-rich readers to win a prize of great distinction but very limited value.

So, go to it. But no tracking down and checking the actual OfS Register for clues please (I’m looking at you Mike Ratcliffe, although you probably already have it memorised) as it really is just a bit of fun.

Good luck. And remember all of these institutions are in England (if they exist).