06 June 2018 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
While the OfS is no doubt very busy with provider registrations, other streams of its work continue to progress. This week Chief Executive Nicola Dandridge wrote an article for Wonkhe this week on how the OfS will approach its responsibility to ensure Value for Money for students and taxpayers – one of the four pillars of the new regulatory framework.
There’s a welcome acknowledgement that different students will see VfM in different ways, and also that students are not the only focus. She writes that “As the regulatory framework makes clear, we also need to consider value for money in terms of the taxpayer. In that context the expression is more likely to relate to the benefits not just to students, but also to the country and the economy – balanced against the amount of taxpayer subsidy.”
The likely courses of action she outlines are in two areas – “regulation of individual providers”, that presumably would be seen to be below the required standard in some areas, and about transparency and the provision of information to students.
The former is a big unknown, but for the latter the OfS will take its lead from the report it commissioned earlier in the year. Let’s hope this also includes the importance of explaining to students (and perhaps more importantly, their parents…) how the fee and loan system actually works. That what students will ultimately pay bears no relation whatsoever to the ‘sticker price’ on the prospectus, is still perhaps the biggest misunderstanding.
