27JUL

OfS counts 102 of 279 providers in deficit

2 min read

11:11UTC

The Office for Students counted 102 of 279 providers forecasting a deficit in their own filed returns, 8.4 points below the modelled figure this desk has been publishing for the same year.

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Key takeaway

OfS counted 36.6% of providers in deficit against its own modelled 45%.

The Office for Students (OfS) counted 102 of 279 providers, or 36.6%, forecasting a deficit for 2025-26 in the Annual Financial Return each one filed itself, in the annual report it published on 14 May 2026⁠¹. That is up from 84 providers, 30.1%, the cycle before, and the report puts restructuring costs at £218.2m in 2024-25, a rise of 20.7%. The Annual Financial Return is the yearly account of its own finances that every registered provider must send the regulator.

The 45% and 41% this ledger has carried come from the same regulator for the same academic year. Each figure is accurate for the year it names, 45% of English providers in deficit for 2025-26 and 41% in 2026-27. Both come from the OfS update of November 2025, where they appear as the regulator's own modelled scenario for what happens "without mitigating action"⁠².

8.4 points separate the model from the count. One figure is a modelled downside case, the other a tally of what the sector actually submitted, from one regulator, for one academic year. Neither replaces the other, and this desk's cell will now name the model as a model rather than presenting it as a count.

No 2026-27 deficit count appears anywhere in the May report, so the 41% has nothing in the register to check it against, and saying so beats implying otherwise. A student feels the difference as the gap between a warning and a course that closes. The report itself predates this window by three and a half months and appears here because no outlet reported it.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

English universities and colleges report to their regulator, the Office for Students, on whether they expect to spend more than they earn. Two different exercises produced two different numbers for the exact same academic year. One number, published in November 2025, modelled a worst-case scenario if nothing changed and found 45% of providers would be in deficit. The other, published on 14 May 2026, simply counted what 279 providers actually told the regulator in their own financial returns: 36.6%, or 102 providers. Neither number is wrong; they measure different things, a projected worst case against providers' own current forecast.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The two OfS figures for 2025-26 measure different things by design. The 45% comes from a modelled scenario built on autumn 2025 recruitment data and assumes no further mitigating action is taken; the 36.6% comes from providers' own Annual Financial Return forecasts, filed as their current best estimate.

A model of a downside case and a count of what institutions actually submitted will diverge whenever real behaviour departs from the modelled assumption, which is exactly what discipline rule 2 means by naming a projection as the projector's own.

A second structural cause is timing: the 45% figure was modelled in November 2025, before providers had filed their most current AFR forecasts; the 36.6% count reflects a later filing round in which some providers had already taken cost action the earlier model could not see.

What could happen next?

Meaning
OfS's 36.6% figure is a count of what providers themselves filed, not a projection, and is more current than the modelled 45% figure this desk previously carried.
Precedent
The prior year's forecast for the same metric moved three times before an audited outturn was known, so this year's figures should be expected to move again before 2025-26 is audited.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: OfS's own reporting for 2024-25 shows the same instability inside one regulator's figures over time: the provisional forecast for that year was first published at 45.2%, then restated at 44.2% once the full Annual Financial Return cycle completed, before the actual audited outturn came in lower still at 35.8% (per this desk's own paragraph-level source mapping). A forecast for the same year moved on three separate occasions before the real figure was known.

Counter-parallel: Unlike 2024-25, where all three figures eventually converged on a single audited outturn, no equivalent outturn yet exists for 2025-26; the sector's real position for the current year will not be settled until the same audit cycle completes.

Consensus view: OfS's own 14 May 2026 annual report counts 102 of 279 providers, 36.6%, forecasting a 2025-26 deficit in their own filed Annual Financial Return, describing this as providers' current submitted forecast rather than a modelled scenario.

Counter-view: OfS's separate November 2025 update models a "without mitigating action" downside scenario for the identical academic year at 45%, built from autumn 2025 recruitment data rather than from what providers actually filed; the same regulator produces both figures and neither supersedes the other.

Key tension: Whether the sector's true deficit share for 2025-26 is closer to the 36.6% providers themselves have filed, or the 45% OfS's own downside model still projects for the same year.

Sources:Office for Students

Mentions:Office for Students →

First Reported In

Update #3 · Debt ratio fell; borrowing missed by £2.3bn

Office for Students· 3 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

45% of universities spent beyond income

Reframes the modelled 45%/41% deficit figures against the annual report's filed-return count for the same academic year.

Occurred 31 Oct 2025

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This Event

OfS counts 102 of 279 providers in deficit

A regulator's downside model and a tally of what providers actually filed are different exercises, and neither supersedes the other.

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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.