Universities ‘overthinking’ competition laws, says OfS chair

The chair of the English higher education regulator has suggested institutions may be too risk averse when it comes to navigating competition laws. 

“I sometimes think we make up challenges for ourselves,” said Edward Peck, chair of the Office for Students (OfS), responding to concerns from the sector that competition law is a barrier to increased collaboration. 

“The problem about the [Competitions and Markets Authority] coming down on institutions who start to collaborate and decide who does what; I think it’s a bit of a fantasy.”

Speaking at an event about the regulator’s new strategy in London on 10 December, Peck referenced the decision by Nottingham Trent University to take on provision of level 4 courses previously being delivered by Mansfield College during his time as vice-chancellor of the university. 

“You could argue that created…less choice for local people,” but “we didn’t defer to [the] CMA, we hardly kept it a secret and nothing happened,” he said. “You might be overthinking things a bit about what might go wrong”.

The CMA has previously said it is “broadly supportive” of collaboration within the higher education sector. 

Officials from the regulator were also grilled by higher education leaders on the metrics used to measure an institution’s quality, with one vice-chancellor claiming continuation rates can lack context, particularly for institutions focused on widening access.

Peck responded that there was a need “to be real about what’s going on”. He said, in one case, the OfS had identified a franchise provider with an 11 per cent continuation rate. 

“It's really important that we recognise the reality of all those providers, some of whom are inept, some of whom have poor intent,” he said, adding that he agreed it was important to “contextualise”. 

He said the OfS should be more “open and explicit” about some of the data it receives and the “really poor” performance it has to deal with.

Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, agreed it wasn’t possible to reduce the “value and complexity” of the diverse sector to a small number of metrics but caveated that there are certain data points the regulator needs to know. 

“But…we don’t simply look at the number and tick the box; we’ve never done that. We are intensely interested in context.”

Josh Fleming, director of strategy and delivery at the OfS, told the audience that the regulator was looking to reduce the burden on institutions, including by collaborating with sector IT agency Jisc, and has recently cut the number of data points providers have to report on. 

The event followed confirmation from the government that it will move ahead with plans to require institutions delivering franchise provision with over 300 students to register with the OfS in a bid to crack down on fraud. 

Lapworth said the regulator was also concerned about similar problems with validation models. “We are a bit worried that some of those currently engaged in franchising will switch to validation and the risks will start to migrate.”

helen.packer@timeshighereducation.com