There’s no nice way to talk about redundancy. It doesn’t arrive as a single moment, even when there is a single date attached to it. It arrives in phases: uncertainty, waiting, the conversation itself, the aftermath. For some, it’s sudden. For others, it’s drawn out and quietly exhausting. Either way, it has a way of cutting through confidence, identity, and momentum, particularly in a sector many of us entered because we believed in it.

The Office for Students’ (OfS) latest proposal represents a significant shift in how teaching quality and student outcomes will be assessed. The message is clear: every higher education provider will be pulled into a single, integrated quality-assessment system that blends the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) with core regulatory conditions. For the sector, it’s a moment of scrutiny, but also a chance to rethink how we support students.