Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are the twenty universities with the largest financial deficits.

The Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator of higher education in England, is responsible for monitoring the sector’s financial sustainability. Its most recent report on the sector’s financial health, published in May 2026, found that 35.8 per cent of providers recorded a deficit in 2024/25, an improvement on earlier forecasts of 44.2 per cent, however, deficits alone do not provide a complete picture of financial health

Key financial indicators are also published through the Higher Education Statistics Agency and in providers’ own financial statements

The department does not hold information on the twenty universities with the largest deficits. While the OfS collects provider-level data, it does not routinely rank institutions.