Staff Q&As: Bolu Onatade

This time, we’re speaking to Bolu Onatade, who tells us about his journey from intern to risk manager, and what it’s like working in our Regulation team to make sure universities and colleges are meeting the requirements we put in place to ensure all students can reap the benefits higher education can bring.

Tell us about your role – what do you do at the OfS?

Every university or college that registers with us has to meet a set of standards to show that they are delivering high quality higher education and are protecting students.

In my role as a risk manager, my job is to look at the evidence and assess whether individual institutions are meeting these requirements.

What does a typical day look like for you in your role?

I spend a sizeable amount of my work day on case work, which usually involves looking at incoming information about universities and colleges and carrying out risk assessments. We do these when a university or college first registers with us and we update them when we receive new information. This information could come from our regular data collection, or something the institution itself, a student, or someone else has told us.

A typical day will also see me having lots of conversations with people at the universities and colleges we regulate. My team is responsible for a portfolio of institutions and we’re usually the first point of contact for them when they have a question.

Learning is really important to me. I’m still fairly new to higher education regulation, so I try to spend some time in my day, whenever I can, reading about the important issues and developments in higher education.

Can you tell us about an important project you are working on and why it’s important?

I’ve been supporting the work we’ve been doing around the financial sustainability of the sector, which we know has been under pressure. We’ve been working hard to better understand what’s happening on the ground at universities and colleges and how we can help them to make sure students are protected.

What aspects of your work excite you the most?

I enjoy the fact that I get to draw on the experiences of the people I work with – whether I have a question for a data expert or want to check something with our communications team, it feels like we're all working in sync.

What are the challenges you’re coming up against in your area?

The work we do at the OfS can be quite broad as we look at a many different aspects of the student experience.

When I first joined, I was surprised by the number of teams we have and the responsibilities we need to balance as an organisation.

It's been interesting to find out more about what my colleagues are working on and I'm learning something new every day.

Why did you join the OfS? What did you do before you came here and how have your previous experiences informed the way you work now?

I joined the OfS as an intern just over a year ago and have since moved into a permanent role in our Regulation team. I was attracted to the OfS because I wanted to change the experiences of students for the better.

I wouldn’t describe myself as the typical intern as I had worked for around six years across market research, academia, policy analysis and research, and in the charity sector before I decided to go back to school to complete a masters' degree in international politics.

Most of my professional career – and how I approach my role today – has been informed by a desire to support something bigger than myself and make a positive impact on people’s lives.

If you could give one piece of advice to students in 2025, what would it be?

Seize all the opportunities you can – there’s more out there than you might realise, you miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take, and time really does fly when you’re at university or college!