Choice, competition, command or control?

There are now more demands and requirements placed on higher education institutions than ever before. It’s an unlikely truism, but Conservative governments generally tend to seek to centralise and control universities – in Michael Barber’s language of how policy is made: It’s the difference between “Trust and Altruism” and “Choice and Competition” drifting into “Command and Control.”

Now Barber is Chair of the Office for Students and it's his turn to implement the theory.

Enter the regulators

A major consultation on a new framework for the OfS to regulate English providers of higher education is expected to be published today.

Much of it will be familiar to those who followed the passage of the recent act from its green paper origins to royal assent. But there are still many outstanding questions about how the new regime will work, and how the legislation will be applied.

Above all, what will the conditions be that providers will have to sign up to in order to have access to the Register, which comes with access to student loans and the other trappings of the higher education system?

Following the recent freeze of the tuition fee cap, TEF's ability to set differential fees was broken, and so one common suggestion is that TEF will now need to be a condition of registration. In other words, every provider that wants to be part of the system will need to be in TEF, in the same way that each must already be part of the wider quality system.

The consultation will also be looking at the nuts and bolts of the OfS – how will it balance the demands of competition and autonomy while maintaining “proportionate” regulatory approaches? How will the remarkable new powers of entry (extreme audit?) be used? What sanctions will be available to the new regulator, and how will they be applied? Following strong ministerial direction, we can also expect measures on senior staff pay to feature prominently, but what form will they take, and will they have any real teeth? And how will approaches compare to other sectors?

Today's papers lead on a push to ensure free speech at universities - perhaps another new condition of registration - but its unclear how this would be different to universities' existing duties here. For regulatory requirements in this area, will be it be more of the same, or a genuine change?

Widely expected is an end to regular institutional visits – the “periodic review” is likely to be replaced by a new method for the OfS to use live data to monitor institutions. It may well be easier than the annual submission, but now is a good time to be a big data wonk, as new systems and process will need to be established in institutions to respond to a new approach.

Then there’s the Student Panel. Announced by OfS CEO Nicola Dandridge this time last week, it’s the “students” in the Office for Students. The language used in the launch was about taking students’ views into account, but it's notable as a parallel structure to the National Union of Students’ role as political representatives of students. The panel’s launch last week had a mixed response reminiscent of other government-sponsored student listening exercises of years gone by like the ultimately defunct National Student Forum, Student Juries, and Minister of Students in the old Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS).

And to add another piece of the puzzle, last week saw the slimmed-down UK Quality Code make an appearance, with a consultation on the new document open until 13 December. The “core” practices are now presented in a one-page table of desired outcomes rather than hundreds of carefully co-created pages from the sector as in the old Code. Worryingly, students only make one appearance as sources of “feedback”, with student engagement dropped to the lower level of “supplementary” practices. Two further consultations will follow.

It’s a funny conclusion to reach in a month with so many consultations, but the sector also needs to keep an eye on how much say it really has in all of this. The new Quality Code is pretty much as-final – a ratification rather than discussion is expected via the consultation.

And just how much influence universities will have on the new regulatory framework remains to be seen. The consultation, which has been developed away from the spotlight of the sector and among DfE civil servants and the OfS board (Michael Barber pre-eminent in his influence), is likely to run until around Christmas. And then the Office for Students gets to work in January, no matter what the response.