Experts say the next head of the Office for Students must oversee a programme that will protect higher education

The new head of the Office for Students (OfS) will have to oversee rescue plans to avoid a “domino effect” with a number of universities going under, experts have warned.

The new government’s Department for Education (DfE) announced on Tuesday that it had accepted the resignation of the OfS’s controversial chair, James Wharton, a former Tory MP who ran Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. Lord Wharton, who was given the job of running the independent regulator in 2021 despite having no experience of higher education, did not give up the Tory whip in the Lords and was widely criticised for being too close to the Conservative government.