Universities and colleges should ensure that prospective students
get clear information about courses before they apply, terms and
conditions of the contract between institutions and their
students should be fair, and there should be clear complaints
mechanisms to enable redress where students’ consumer rights are
not met, Office for Students chief executive Susan Lapworth will
say today.
As part of its work to protect students’ interests, the English
higher education regulator has today also published an Insight
brief on how students’ rights are protected by consumer law
during the application process and throughout their studies. The
brief also explores how the Office for Students’ (OfS) regulatory
approach helps ensure these rights are upheld in practice.
Choosing where and what to study is one of the biggest decisions
a student is likely to make, and comes with a significant time
and financial commitment. The OfS expects higher education
providers to treat all students as ‘consumers’ for the purposes
of consumer protection law – ensuring that their rights are
protected in practice during their studies. This means that
universities and colleges have responsibilities which include
ensuring that:
- Students receive clear, accurate
and timely information about their course and university or
college.
- Student contracts contain fair
terms and conditions.
- There are fair mechanisms for
dealing with complaints.
There are a number of laws protecting students, and comprehensive
guidance about how to comply with them has been published by the
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The OfS’s regulation of
consumer protection matters draws on the CMA’s guidance.
In November 2022, the OfS formed a partnership with National
Trading Standards (NTS) to extend its work on protecting
students’ consumer rights. The agreement means that NTS will
examine each notification it receives from the OfS about a
potential breach of consumer protection legislation. Referrals
can relate to:
- Unfair terms and conditions in
student contracts, such as terms which purport to allow providers
to make fundamental changes to contracts without the consent of
students or exclude or limit students’ legal rights and remedies.
- Organisations that wrongly claim to
be registered with the OfS or to have degree awarding powers or
university title.
- Misleading advertising by ‘essay
mills’ (organisations that allow students to commit academic
fraud by commissioning written work).
Susan Lapworth, chief executive of the OfS, will today speak at
an online event discussing the Insight brief’s findings and the
OfS’s regulation to help safeguard students’ consumer rights.
Speaking on students’ consumer rights, Susan Lapworth will say:
‘A degree is one of the biggest financial investments a student
will make in their lifetime. Many universities and colleges
provide clear, accurate and timely information to help students
with this significant decision.
‘Yet often this isn’t the case. We also see too many cases where
the terms and conditions in the contract between a university and
its students may not be fair. And the increase in the case work
of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator signals the
continued importance of responsive complaints processes for
students not satisfied with their course.
‘The OfS’s regulation focuses higher education providers on the
need to ensure their policies and practices comply with consumer
protection law. We have also begun to refer cases to National
Trading Standards where we think an institution may not have
complied with the law.
‘Over the next year, we plan to develop our approach further to
ensure we can intervene to protect the interests of students as
consumers. This may involve revisiting our current consumer
protection conditions and considering replacing them with more
focused requirements.
‘Students and those who support them can continue to contact us
through our notifications system, to inform our understanding of
the issues they face.’
ENDS
Notes
- The Office for Students is the
independent regulator for higher education in England. Our aim is
to ensure that every student, whatever their background, has a
fulfilling experience of higher education that enriches their
lives and careers.
- Register to the ‘Protecting students as
consumers’ Insight event, taking place at 10:00am on
Thursday 15 June 2023. You will need a Zoom account to register
to the event.
- The Insight brief (attached) is
subject to the same embargo as the press release (0001 on
Thursday 15 June 2023) and may undergo final presentation changes
before publication.
- Read about the agreement between
National Trading
Standards and the OfS.
-
Discover Uni provides
prospective students with information and guidance to help them
choose and compare courses across the UK. The website is
managed by the OfS on behalf of the UK higher education funding
and regulatory bodies, which are the OfS, the Scottish Funding
Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, and
the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland.
