Regulator seeks more information on English university finances

England’s higher education regulator has asked universities to provide additional information about their finances, amid continuing concern about the viability of some providers.

A letter from the Office for Students to university accountable officers asks them to provide an interim financial return, setting out forecast performance for 2024-25, in addition to the usual year-end reporting.

The information being sought by the regulator covers income, expenditure, cash balances, net cash inflow (or outflow), borrowing, and any breaches of bank covenants.

David Smy, the deputy director of enabling regulation, writes that the OfS needs to “improve the agility of [its] approach to financial monitoring”, collecting core data “on more of a real-time basis throughout the year”.

“We will use this information to refresh our understanding of the finances of individual providers, and the wider sector, in light of the current challenges to financial sustainability. The updated information will allow us to prioritise our engagement, effectively target our discussions with providers, and ensures the core data we use to model financial risk scenarios is the most recent,” Smy writes.

The OfS says that it has responded to feedback asking for information that is absolutely necessary, seeking to minimise the burden on providers.

The intervention comes after the OfS predicted that three-quarters of English providers faced falling into deficit after student recruitment lagged well below expectations.

Many institutions have been particularly hard hit by severe declines in their lucrative international student enrolments, leading to an estimated 5,000 job cuts across the UK sector so far this year, according to calculations by the University and College Union.

Higher education institutions must provide the OfS with the requested information by 10 April.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com