The High Court finds the regulator made errors in law
The University of Sussex has overturned the £585,000 fine imposed on it by the Office for Students over the Kathleen Stock affair, with the High Court finding the regulator made errors in law and showed possible bias in how it investigated. It is the most consequential higher education judgment of the year: the free speech regime stands, but the way the regulator has been enforcing it does not.
A regulator “asleep at the wheel”
The Guardian’s analysis argues the Sussex defeat is a symptom rather than an incident — a regulator accused of missing the financial crisis in the sector while pursuing a high-profile case it has now lost. For students the question is practical: the Office for Students is where complaints about free speech, quality and harassment ultimately land, and its credibility is what makes those routes worth using.
“I quit my graduate job”: one alternative route, honestly told
An Aston graduate describes leaving a graduate job and building a property portfolio in three years. Read it as one person’s account rather than a template — survivorship makes these stories look more repeatable than they are — but in a year of record-low graduate vacancies, the alternatives are worth knowing about. Graduate jobs in the UK covers the conventional route.