Must do better: OfS responds to House of Lords inquiry

Chris Parr looks at the Office for Students’ reply to the Lords committee report

When it published its report on the Office for Students in September, the House of Lords industry and regulators committee pulled no punches. The peers said the OfS was not meeting the needs of students or universities, lacked independence from government, and was “driven by the ebb and flow of short-term political priorities and media headlines”.

The report—unsubtly named Must Do Better: The Office for Students and the Looming Crisis Facing Higher Education—concluded it is “clear that the poor relationship between the OfS and providers has been in part because the OfS’s approach has been overly distant and combative”.