The higher education regulatory burden is already too great and yet is still growing. At a time of limited funding for universities and colleges and a declining unit of resource, the sector can ill afford the growing cost of regulation. Short term changes to legislation are unlikely. Therefore it is suggested that new principles for the assurance of quality and standards be established, a new UK-wide regulatory agency is established and a range of costly and burdensome regulatory activities be ended.
England’s Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (HERA) has not worked as intended; the original aspirations for the legislation have been found to be unhelpfully focused on expanding the diversity of HE providers rather than, as was originally promised, proportional and risk-based regulation of an already over-burdened sector. Moreover, the additional impetus given to the divergence of regulatory arrangements within the nations of the UK by the departure of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) from its role as Designated Quality Body (DQB) in England has highlighted the need for greater national alignment across the sector.
Since 2017 the regulatory regime has shifted everything to being a low trust environment, one which is very expensive and does little to improve the quality of provision, help students, support graduate achievement or burnish the international reputation of one of the country’s outstanding export success stories. This is not about criticism of the Office for Students (the OfS), the QAA or any other sector agency. Rather it is a recognition that bold reform is required to regulation, including to the assurance of quality and standards, if the quality and standard of higher education is to be sustained not undermined. Moreover, there is a case to rationalise the patchwork of higher education agencies in the interests of efficiency and effectiveness. A review of HERA is on the way but any minor modifications resulting are not going to be sufficient to address these issues.
