The OU wouldn't be cheaper on that model. Part time students get a (modest) premium in funding on a pro-rata basis - ie part time students are worth more per full-time equivalent (FTE).
It would be more efficient to run existing PT courses as FT. Some of the premium is to account for fixed per-head costs: you have to do a certain amount of admin per student per year, regardless of whether they're doing a FT year's worth of study that year or a twelfth of it, the library has to pay per enrolled student for access to electronic resources, etc.
But you'd be losing the main benefit of PT study which is that most students studying that way not only don't need a semi-subsidised loan for living expenses, but are in employment and actually substantially contributing to the Exchequer through income tax amd NI.
In actuality, the OU (and Birkbeck) were facing a funding cut in 2013 of something of the same order as Departments are being asked to spec out, as a result of the ELQ (Equivalent of Lower Qualification) funding cut. The detail is complex and still under some negotiation, but essentially from then the Govt won't pay for a student to study a degree if they already have an equivalent or higher qualification.A substantial proportion of PT students are like that. Even worse, they tend to be cheap-to-teach students: they tend to do pretty well and not need huge amounts of support, so the financial impact is potentially even larger.
On the other hand, Cameron chose to give an important speech at the OU, and said it had "a huge huge role to play" in dealing with hte current economic woes, so maybe the coalition has sonethig up its sleeve here. But maybe not - Brown gave two speeches at the OU and introduced the funding cut.
(I work for the OU. I should stress this is my personal view, not an official one.)
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-07-19 05:24 am (UTC)It would be more efficient to run existing PT courses as FT. Some of the premium is to account for fixed per-head costs: you have to do a certain amount of admin per student per year, regardless of whether they're doing a FT year's worth of study that year or a twelfth of it, the library has to pay per enrolled student for access to electronic resources, etc.
But you'd be losing the main benefit of PT study which is that most students studying that way not only don't need a semi-subsidised loan for living expenses, but are in employment and actually substantially contributing to the Exchequer through income tax amd NI.
In actuality, the OU (and Birkbeck) were facing a funding cut in 2013 of something of the same order as Departments are being asked to spec out, as a result of the ELQ (Equivalent of Lower Qualification) funding cut. The detail is complex and still under some negotiation, but essentially from then the Govt won't pay for a student to study a degree if they already have an equivalent or higher qualification.A substantial proportion of PT students are like that. Even worse, they tend to be cheap-to-teach students: they tend to do pretty well and not need huge amounts of support, so the financial impact is potentially even larger.
On the other hand, Cameron chose to give an important speech at the OU, and said it had "a huge huge role to play" in dealing with hte current economic woes, so maybe the coalition has sonethig up its sleeve here. But maybe not - Brown gave two speeches at the OU and introduced the funding cut.
(I work for the OU. I should stress this is my personal view, not an official one.)