The Office for Students (OfS) has welcomed the publication of a National Audit Office (NAO) report into regulating the financial sustainability of universities and other higher education providers in England.
The report praises the OfS’s use of the financial data it collects and makes recommendations about how the OfS could develop its engagement with individual providers in relation to their financial position.
Commenting, Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of the OfS, said:
'We welcome the focus of the NAO on the financial sustainability of higher education providers. This is an issue of significant importance to students and the wider communities that universities and colleges serve, as well as to taxpayers.
'When the pandemic began, we made regulating the financial sustainability of universities and other higher education providers a priority. We streamlined our requirements, and required universities and colleges to report to us if they believed their liquidity/cash levels would drop below 30 days expenditure. We engaged with the vast majority of them during the early stages of the pandemic to test their plans to manage the impact of the pandemic on their financial position. We also used an interim data return to build an early picture of the impact of the pandemic across the sector as a whole.
'We have worked closely with a small number of providers who have reported concerns about their financial position.
'We welcome the NAO’s acknowledgement of the OfS’s good use of financial data.
'There is – as the report rightly notes and as we have made clear – considerable variation in financial performance and outlook between individual providers. However, the predictions by others that dozens of providers would fall victim to the financial pressures of the pandemic have not materialised. Providers generally entered the pandemic in good financial shape, adjusted their financial strategies appropriately, and made prudent use of borrowing to protect financial viability. Student recruitment remained buoyant.
'Universities and other higher education providers are responsible for running their businesses, and the OfS has always been clear that it is not our role to bail out those that would otherwise fail. Where a provider is facing financial challenges, we will intervene to ensure that it takes action to enable students to continue their studies. The data and other intelligence we routinely collect ensures we stay alert to risks and challenges for individual providers and the sector as a whole.
'We are carefully reflecting on the NAO’s recommendations on where we could do more in our engagement with universities, colleges and other providers. So, for example, we are currently taking forward work to capture providers’ perspectives on a range of issues, including financial sustainability, and we will take the NAO’s views into account in that context.'