Susan Lapworth, as the Chief Executive of the Office for Students (OfS), plays a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of higher education in England. Her leadership is underpinned by a steadfast commitment to quality, accountability, and the welfare of students. In an era of rising scrutiny of universities — especially around value for money, freedom of speech, student outcomes, and financial sustainability — the role of someone like Lapworth becomes ever more central.
Early Experience and Rise to Leadership
Susan Lapworth’s trajectory is marked by deep experience in higher education regulation. Before ascending to the top job at the OfS, she served in senior capacities at HEFCE (the Higher Education Funding Council for England), where regulatory rigour, sector insight, and stakeholder relationships were essential. Over time, she earned a reputation for combining technical competence with a clear-headed commitment to fairness.
She joined the OfS as Director of Regulation, bringing with her a wealth of institutional knowledge and sector credibility. In May 2022, she stepped into the role of interim Chief Executive, and in September of that year she was formally appointed to a full term set to run until August 2026.
Her prior roles honed her grasp of the structural, financial, and pedagogical pressures facing universities. More importantly, they shaped her conviction that regulation must be both robust and fair — safeguarding students while enabling institutions to flourish.
Mandate and Mission
Upholding Quality and Standards
At the heart of Lapworth’s remit is ensuring that students receive quality learning and outcomes. The OfS under her leadership emphasises threshold measures (minimum standards that institutions must meet), more rigorous monitoring, and clear mechanisms for intervention when problems emerge.
Student Interests First
Lapworth often frames her work as rooted in protecting student interests — ensuring that students are not short-changed in teaching, support, or outcomes. She sees regulation as a public interest task, rather than merely a transactional oversight body.
Ensuring Financial Resilience
One of the trickiest tasks is navigating the financial sustainability of providers. Many universities face tightening budgets, demographic pressures, and rising costs. Under Lapworth, the OfS has sharpened focus on institutional viability and early warning systems, to prevent sudden financial shocks for students and staff alike.
Safeguarding Freedom of Speech and Addressing Harassment
Given the growing public, political, and media focus on free expression, harassment, and misconduct, Lapworth’s tenure has been marked by efforts to enforce new statutory responsibilities. She has emphasised that universities must cultivate environments where debate is open and safe, but without tolerance for harassment or discrimination.
Key Policy Initiatives Under Lapworth
Threshold Conditions and Regulatory Interventions
Lapworth has overseen a steady tightening of the threshold conditions framework, giving the OfS clearer grounds to intervene when a provider falls short in metrics like student outcomes or retention. This has included putting institutions on regulatory plans or, in extreme cases, revoking registration.
Transparency and Data Use
The OfS has under Lapworth pushed for more data transparency — publishing performance metrics, forecasts of risk, and financial sustainability data. This openness helps students make informed choices and holds institutions to account.
Collaboration with Sector Bodies
Lapworth does not operate in isolation. She routinely engages with sector bodies, student unions, parliament, and external stakeholders to refine policies, test ideas, and build consensus. Her style blends firmness with dialogue, seeking to frame regulation as a partnership rather than an adversarial imposition.
Guidance on Freedom of Speech and Harassment
Under her leadership, the OfS has turned its attention to universities’ free speech obligations and campus culture. It issues guidance and expects institutions to develop policies handling harassment, misconduct, and speech-related complaints — ensuring that regulation aligns with legal responsibilities and societal expectations.
Leadership Style and Public Engagement
Susan Lapworth’s leadership style can be characterised by directness, clarity, and pragmatism. She is known to favour listening and evidence-informed decision-making over rhetorical flourish, though she is not averse to robust public statements when students’ interests or integrity of the system is at stake.
She regularly gives keynote addresses, sector briefings, and speaks in Parliament. In these forums, she often emphasises real-world examples: how regulatory failures harm students, how financial collapse at a university can devastate local communities, and how free speech without boundaries can descend into abuse.
Lapworth also values foresight and early intervention. Rather than waiting for crises to unfold, she pushes for regulatory tools that anticipate risk — and for institutions to develop internal safeguards.
Her relations with institutions are challenging ones: regulated entities may bristle at greater oversight. But her ability to combine pressure with outreach has often allowed her to bring even reluctant providers into dialogue or improvement pathways.
Achievements and Impact
Strengthened Accountability
Under Lapworth, the OfS has become more assertive. It has pursued formal regulatory interventions, escalated consequences for underperformance, and tightened its regime around quality. This has reinforced public confidence that regulation is meaningful, not symbolic.
Enhanced Data Transparency
Students, parents, and policymakers now benefit from more accessible performance data and risk indicators. This improved transparency helps prospective students compare providers, and helps the sector itself benchmark and improve.
Early Warning on Financial Risk
The OfS’s financial monitoring under Lapworth has sought to identify distress before it becomes catastrophic. By placing a spotlight on weaker providers, it pressures them to act earlier or face consequences, potentially mitigating sudden collapses or student disruption.
Elevating Free Speech and Harassment Policy
Lapworth’s tenure has seen the OfS more actively demand that universities translate their legal and moral commitments into policies: strategies, reporting mechanisms, training, oversight. This puts universities’ cultural ethos under sharper regulatory focus.
Challenges and Criticisms
Balancing Pressure and Autonomy
Universities often raise concerns about overregulation and erosion of institutional autonomy. Striking the right balance — pushing for quality while allowing innovation and flexibility — is a perpetual tension. Lapworth must guard against backlash, especially when regulatory demands worsen workload or compliance burden.
Defining and Enforcing “Good Outcomes”
What constitutes a “good outcome” is contested. Some critics argue that heavy emphasis on metrics (graduation rates, employability, further study) risks narrowing education to transactional outputs. Lapworth must defend a nuanced understanding of value, beyond raw figures, while still enforcing accountability.
Managing Resource and Staffing Constraints
The OfS’s ambition hinges on sufficient capacity: analysts, auditors, field staff, regulatory heft. Ensuring that the regulator itself is well-resourced is a structural challenge in a constrained public funding environment.
Political and Public Pressure
Higher education is a political lightning rod. Debates about tuition fees, free speech, institutional governance, and student welfare are highly visible. Lapworth’s public statements and regulatory choices will inevitably attract political scrutiny — she must navigate contested terrain without compromising integrity.
Financial Shocks and Institutional Failures
In cases where a university runs into serious financial trouble, the stakes are enormous: students, staff, local communities all suffer. Lapworth must ensure that her regulatory regime anticipates, mitigates, and responds to such crises. But no regime is perfect: some events may exceed predictive capacity.
The Path Forward
As Lapworth’s tenure continues until at least 2026, several priorities appear likely to shape her further work:
- Refining regulatory metrics. Expect further evolution of threshold measures, better calibration of risk models, and adaptation as the sector shifts, for instance as online provision expands.
- Deeper work on equity, access, and inclusion. Ensuring that regulation supports widening participation efforts, closing attainment gaps, and supporting disadvantaged students without simply penalising institutions.
- Stronger guidance on emerging modalities. New teaching models such as hybrid, remote, and modular study will require regulation that accommodates legitimate innovation while guarding standards.
- International benchmarking and credibility. The UK higher education sector is global. Lapworth may further align OfS expectations with global standards, enhancing the system’s international standing and cross-border student confidence.
- Sustainability and resilience planning. In a changing financial and demographic climate, more foresight, scenario planning, cross-sector stress tests, and resilience frameworks are likely.
- Enhanced student agency and voice. Amplifying student representation in regulatory processes to ensure the system remains responsive and grounded in lived student experience.
Conclusion
Susan Lapworth has emerged as a defining figure in recent years for the regulation of higher education in England. With a blend of experience, rigour, and principle, she has steered the Office for Students into a more assertive and transparent phase. Her work is not without controversy or difficulty: tensions over autonomy, metrics, resources, and political scrutiny remain acute. But her leadership is marked by a clear ethos — that regulation must protect students, maintain high standards, and foster resilient institutions.
