In its quick and unhappy life, England’s Workplace for Students has actually been used a series of obstacles it has mainly stopped working to satisfy. This week the current and most embarrassing of those was unveiled when the high court decisively rejected the higher education guard dog’s efforts to fine the University of Sussex more than ₤ 500,000 for regulative failings associating with Kathleen Stock’s time as an academic at Sussex.Stock quit Sussex in 2021, stating she felt ostracised and targeted for her views on gender identity and transgender rights. Here was the greatest profile test case that the OfS had seen: a topic of enormous controversy and sensitivity, involving key concerns of scholastic liberty and flexibility of speech. But as we now know from Mrs Justice Lieven’s judgment, in its rush to step in, the OfS handled to loop its own shoelaces.The high court hearing revealed that the OfS aspired to make an example of Sussex, to the extent that the court tossed out its fine for predisposition and predetermination together with a string of other jurisdictional failings.Rather than mentor Sussex a lesson, it was the OfS that ended up with a bloody nose.
However the damage goes much deeper than that. Susan Lapworth, up until recently the OfS’s chief executive, started the ball rolling in 2021 with the Sussex investigation. Almost five years later on, with nothing to show for it, the OfS is still stopping working to do much for the trainees in whose name it is indicated to regulate.To take one example: in 2023 the New York Times exposed a variety of lucrative higher education colleges in England which used trainees with few certifications access to trainee loans. The numbers enrolled had rocketed in the last few years, something a proactive regulator may have observed. But all the OfS could say at the time was that it was”working to enhance partnership information to help enhance policy”. What about risks to students going to universities registered with the OfS? Phil Brickell, the Labour MP for Bolton West, went public at the end of in 2015, accusing the OfS of
being “asleep at the wheel”in managing the University of Greater Manchester regardless of large media protection– spearheaded by the Mill in Manchester– of the university’s management malfunctions, bullying and financial issues.The Mill’s reporting began in February last year, the Greater Manchester cops began examining in March, and the vice-chancellor was suspended in May by the university’s board.
It wasn’t until December that the OfS announced its own investigation.Meanwhile the college sector in England remains in financial chaos, with departments closing and academics being made redundant. The OfS response has actually been to make unclear and disturbing statements about scores of college institutions being at threat of”exiting the market”, leaving present and future students in the dark.But there is some good news. The OfS’s bumbling largely occurred under previous management. Lapworth just recently stood down as chief executive, to be changed from June by Ruth Hannant and Polly Payne, two knowledgeable civil servants.
Their challenge will be to do some regulating where it is needed, and reconstruct the OfS’s relationship with the sector.