Educators make way for bean counters at the UK Office for Students!

Anyone working at the Office for Students could be wondering if they suddenly woke up in a parallel universe. An organization that managed to make few friends in the UK higher education sector since its inception in 2018, following the 2017 Higher Education and Research Act. Its remit being to “work in the interests of student and prospective students and taking charge of the granting of degree powers and university title.”

Since which time it has busied itself with submitting the sector to increasingly cumbersome regulatory requirements and a focus on numerous causes, including most recently harassment and sexual misconduct, fair access and participation, disability in higher education, free speech on campus, student mental health and wellbeing, all of which are obviously important, but one cannot help feeling with the entire UK higher education sector in such a perilous financial state, that the UK regulator has been caught “fiddling while Rome burned!”