Students as consumers
How we regulate students’ consumer rights
All higher education providers registered with the OfS are subject to a group of ongoing conditions of registration entitled ‘Protecting the interests of all students’.
These are collectively referred to as the ‘C’ conditions. Conditions C1, C2 and C3 relate to aspects of consumer protection law.
Consumer protection in the C conditions
- Condition C1 requires a provider to demonstrate that it has considered relevant guidance, for example, guidance published by the Competition and Markets Authority. in developing and implementing accurate information for applicants and students, fair and transparent student contracts, and fair, accessible complaints processes.
- Condition C2 requires a provider to cooperate with the requirements of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator’s student complaints scheme and to make students aware of their ability to use the scheme.
- Condition C3 requires a provider to publish a student protection plan tailored to its specific circumstances. Student protection plans set out what students can expect to happen if a course, campus, or provider closes. The purpose of a plan is to explain how students could continue and complete their studies or be compensated if this is not possible.
The law sets out minimum standards that apply to various aspects of a provider’s dealings with students, including providing information to prospective students, the fairness of contractual terms and conditions, and complaint handling.
The CMA guidance is an important document and the OfS’s regulatory requirements draw on this.
Learning about concerns
The OfS works with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA), the independent body set up to review student complaints about higher education providers in England and Wales.
The OIA deals with complaints that students have been unable to resolve with their university or college and, where it finds that these are justified, makes recommendations for redress.
The OfS does not have a direct role in dealing with individual complaints or with disputes between students and their university or college.
However, students, student representatives, students’ unions and staff members can use our notifications process to tell us about current issues in their university or college that relate to the matters we regulate. This includes potential concerns about a provider’s compliance with consumer protection law.
Partnership with National Trading Standards
The OfS has a partnership with National Trading Standards, which allows us to make referrals where we identify concerns with a university or college’s compliance with consumer protection law.
We focus on three priority areas, with agreement that National Trading Standards will examine each referral it receives from the OfS where a potential breach of consumer protection legislation has been identified.
These are:
- Unfair terms and conditions in student contracts, such as misleading precontract information on which students rely when choosing their course.
- 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).
We have published case reports to show the type of concerns we have identified and the actions providers have taken to update terms and conditions that Trading Standards considered may be unfair or not comply with consumer protection law.
We encourage providers to engage with these case reports to better understand how to comply with our regulation and consumer protection legislation.
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