Sites of former HE providers: a series. In 1335 the regulator (Edward III) suppressed the University of Stamford. Masters of Arts at Oxford continued to swear not to teach at any other university in England except Cambridge and specifically not Stamford until 1827. #Histed

While it’s possible for a government to do two things at once, it does seem extraordinary that the US government has turned its attention to the money being spent on College football. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

More on the potential sale of the University of Buckingham’s operation to a for-profit company. There’s a fine piece of mischief in here - the picture used is of the former Crewe campus - an utterly disastrous initiative. thecritic.co.uk/asset-stripp...

Our biggest concern must be for genuine students caught in this problem. But, as Jim notes, have DfE/SLC made an assumption that many aren’t genuine? They have the numbers from cases such as ABA, Brit & OBC - is that why? And then, what happens when the college goes bust? wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

Sites of former HEIs: Wesley College, Bristol. An example of planned consolidation, the Methodist Church bought a new site in 1946, selling other colleges and amalgamating them. But costs were too high and the college was closed (see archived website) now a retirement home.

There's a lot of very sound advice in this @lseheblog.bsky.social podcast - doing HE mergers for strategically sound reasons is the best option - they are not a way of saving money in the short term. blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducat...

Outcomes-based regulation has failed to maintain what Sir David Watson called the ‘controlled reputational range’. Here @jimdickinson.bsky.social joins the dots - the picture is a group of for-profit providers (mostly franchising) making a lot of money. wonkhe.com/blogs/regula...

Another reminder of the wide world of higher education - at Euston yesterday saw people with these distinctive bright green scarves. Awards from CNM in herbal medicine, homeopathy and nutrition at ceremony in Friends House. m.youtube.com/watch?v=HZtv...

Former sites of HEIs: a series. The shared home of the LCC Central School and the London Day Training College. Opened by Lord Rosebery in 1907, the LDTC had moved from sharing with Northampton Institute. It later moved to Senate House then Bedford Way. #UCL200 #Histed

Here’s another problem arising from franchising - students who were promised they could study just at the weekend only shouldn’t have been eligible for FT maintenance loans. www.politicshome.com/news/article...

Nice to see @ukri.org explaining its role at Swindon railway station. Posters may be old school advertising, but this campaign explains the difference that research makes to lives. www.ukri.org/news-and-eve...

Another FE merger brings the number of registered providers down to 425. Exeter College has merged with North Devon College and so Petroc has come off the register. The college uses the name 'University Centre for Northern Devon' but it's not listed as trading name by OfS.

We now have measures from OfS and DfE to protect public money by strengthening oversight of partnership delivery. But, if some partnerships with non-genuine students close, where will the money go? A blog on precedents: moremeansbetter.wordpress.com/2026/03/24/w...

Shotover House grounds open for ‘Daffodil Day’. Once part of a royal forest, lots of developments in the 18th century including William Kent designed Octagonal Temple.

I like how the OfS make keeping up with their regulatory activity more fun. On Tuesday they put up a link to a DAP report and then took it down again. The London School of Innovation has had DAPs for a week now. The link is still there but no report

A future aspiration for the LLE might include L7, but it’s hard to see how it could operate across the two loan current schemes for UG and Masters. Good look at the issue from Michelle Morgan. www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/03/22/w...

Excellent myth busting from @hbsj.bsky.social on how the Russell Group got its name (the hotel is now the Kimpton Fitzroy) Plus a chance to remember the wisdom (and mischief) of Sir David Watson on gap between the ‘Bottom Russellers’ and the rest. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sir-dav...

Today’s wfh distraction is the assembly of the crane on the B2 plot of the Old Rd Campus. Hopefully signifying the end of Saturday morning pile-driving, this will put up a new Vaccinology Centre linked with a Pandemic Sciences Centre. We can put up with the distraction for this end.

The choice of statues to adorn the purpose built University of London building in Burlington Gardens was said to reflect its difference from older English universities. Hence Bentham & Hume plus foreign scientists such as Leibniz, Cuvier & Linnaeus.

One of the nice things about commuting weekly is noticing the change in sunlight in sudden bounds. Tonight it was still light when arriving back in Oxford for the first time in months.

OfS has published a regulatory case report and an assessment report for a provider that withdrew its application to join the register. This is a good piece of openness: recently it’s been impossible to know if a provider has applied & not got through. www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications...

It’s clear that a proportion of students accepted onto some franchise courses were not genuine. That is being curtsiled, but it coild have been done quicker. There is a genuine question about getting the money back - in some cases the profits have been very high. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

OfS degree awarding powers news. In an email comes confirmation of the news that Point Blank has DAPs, now that both the report and the link to the order are on the website. The powers come into force on 1 April 2026 - the register confirms that the provider does not have DAP (yet).

Sites of former HEIs - a series. Dorset House, Clifton Down was the first occupational therapy school, offering a two year course. Opened in 1930 it later moved to Headington where it merged with Oxford Polytechnic in 1992. There's an excellent online archive: www.brookes.ac.uk/library/coll...

Peter Scott discusses whether mergers are silver bullets? Useful to recall that the government sponsored mergers in the 1960s to create new institutions with sufficient critical mass to maintain high standards (called Polytechnics). www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

OfS degree awarding powers news: the London School of Innovation Ltd has time-limited DAPs up to masters level in four subject areas. The order was made on 10 March and came into force on 13 March. www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2026/27...

OfS Register News: the count is now down to 426 providers. The College of Osteopaths has “voluntarily deregistered as it no longer intends to deliver higher education in England”. www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-provider...

Lord Willetts on the opportunity for mass higher education to pick up the ethos of Bildung, arising from his review of Lord Biggar’s book. Biggar does note that you might be able to spot a political bias in the book; which is a considerable understatement. www.ft.com/content/19b2...

The launch by OfS of the E10 condition is a big shift. The target is clearly for-profit higher education in city centre branches. Presumably someone has a plan to make sure the genuine students at these places are protected as things become tricky for their providers?

The UK HE sector can do collaboration really well - today members of @acregcouncil.bsky.social came together to talk about mergers, shared services and the timeline for the lifelong learning entitlement. Lots of sharing between very different ‘providers’.

A new OfS condition (e10) on subcontracting requires that “providers must ensure that any risks to the interests of students and/or taxpayers posed by its … subcontractual arrangements are effectively identified and addressed”. There’s a good summary here: wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

Although not perfect, universities are vast engines for social cohesion - full of initiatives within and without campus. Jim is right to point out that none of the good stuff (plus the opportunity to do more) gets into the government’s action plan. wonkhe.com/blogs/what-t...

Regulation of the English HE sector is too much like a black box - it’s hard to tell what’s going on. That may not help providers understand requirements, or students to know where there are issues. @dkernohan.bsky.social has a look at what we know. wonkhe.com/blogs/decisi...

Here’s a curious thing. Nine weeks ago the Telegraph published a detailed piece on some Tax Payers Alliance ‘research’ - with numbers and ‘analysis’ on ‘woke’ university courses. Except the report never came - even in another period of scrutiny of HE. moremeansbetter.wordpress.com/2026/01/17/t...

Student appears on GB News with more means worse talking points: fewer people should go to university (‘50% target makes it meaningless’), LEO isn’t published, university doesn’t equip you for the world of work.

Imagine running a campaign where the premise is the government is suppressing data deliberately, while in reality the government pays money to maintain a website to publish that data. How much chutzpah must it take to keep lying about this day after day? More detail from Jim on @wonkhe.bsky.social

Commuting is fraught with many variables that can hold you up. This evening’s trip disrupted by canal boat crash. www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2590880...

OfS may not have been the principal regulator in these cases, but the public interest governance principles apply to FECs offering HE. Some of these providers have various levels of degree awarding powers. feweek.co.uk/the-fe-secto...

History of education tells us a lot about the past and present, but we were all keen to hear @joshpatel.bsky.social on what this period of HE history tells us about the future. Very helpful to be able to join book launch online today (discount here: www.routledge.com/Universities...) #histed

The OfS key performance measure on registration of new providers is an average of 175 days. There was a pause in considering registrations until 28 August 2025 (which was also when the last new provider was announced) which was 182 days ago.

OfS Provider Closure News: The College of Osteopaths has announced that it will be closing on 28 February 2026. Students can continue with the validating university or transfer. www.officeforstudents.org.uk/for-students...

New HESES data from OfS shows the HE system may have changed. The provider with the second most UG students is now Arden. They have 36,535 UG students (plus 6,395 PG) Arden has a specific B3 condition linked to substantial growth - in the report they were projected to have 22,000 in October 2025.

MPs now have 90 seconds to read in concerns about student loan repayment plans in Westminster Hall debate. Support for the transformative power of HE and the importance of institutions in MP’s constituencies. But few supporters of plan 2 repayments.

This, by Debbie McVitty, gives a good idea of the complexity of assessment & its administration. While there might be talk of efficiency, this is high stakes. No one wants to muck up students’ assessments, least of all the practitioners @acregcouncil.bsky.social wonkhe.com/blogs/wires-...

Happy staring at the OfS TEF dashboard day for all those who ‘celebrate’ it. Now joins up B3 data (as in the proposed integrated scheme) - sector data shows a not very subtle issue in continuation… (salmon pink is not good news)

It’s correct that no inferences should be made about the causes of late publication, but when OfS issues a new accounts direction it should add a requirement for an explanation for all publications a month late. Several of the late reports were signed on time - OfS should enforce 2 week publication.

Education Secretary attacks the notion of reducing university places by 100,000. Reducing access tomorrow is not the answer to graduates loans from yesterday.

Excellent to see two politicians with close involvement with higher education were addressing graduates at Regent College London last week. They praised the students’ achievement of a British degree - a world recognised standard of educational achievement. www.rcl.ac.uk/news/rcl-win...

Academic freedom & freedom of speech are not ‘in the DNA’ of universities as some claim. They are hard-won privileges that need protection and we need to be alive to the possibility they are not equally distributed. Some myth busting here: www.hepi.ac.uk/2026/02/19/c...

It is simply *not* the case that the “original purpose” of universities was “as expensive finishing schools for the upper classes”. It may be that two of them drifted into that, but that highlights how unrepresentative they are of UK higher education. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...