Consumer protection for students

Our role

As the regulator for higher education, we monitor the universities and colleges registered with us to identify those that may not be compliant with consumer protection law.

We use the following sources of information to monitor providers:

• notifications from students or their representatives
• information that universities and colleges report to us
• information from other regulators or bodies, in particular the Office of the Independent Adjudicator.

We also take account of relevant information from other sources, for instance through reports in the media.

National Trading Standards’ role

The OfS has an arrangement 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 may refer cases where we have concerns about:

• 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 the outcomes of cases where universities or colleges have updated terms and conditions in their student contracts that may be unfair or not comply with consumer protection law.