Sorry - I was bashing out a reply on a mobile device while distracted, so I wasn't very clear. I was trying to answer your question, but I'll put my hands up to getting stuck in to a tangential rant about funding cuts. Apologies.
Taking your first question: The bottom line is that OU costs more per full-time equivalent (FTE) student than a conventional university.
I don't have the figure to hand, but from memory the Funding Council premium for part-time students is of the order of 25% more.
There's also the fees paid by students, which are different from tuition fees at conventional universities in many ways (including the fact that you can't get a loan for them and have to pay up front, but there's a more generous financial assistance scheme for low-income students). Again, I don't have the figures to hand, and it's hard to make a perfect comparison, but from memory they're about the same order of magnitude as fees at a conventional university.
And your second question: The cost would probably reduce for increased "class size", but not profoundly. We're already operating at scale (we have of the order of 150,000 undergraduates studying with us), so the cost per student isn't a long way off the marginal cost for extra students.
Unless, of course, there was a really huge expansion, and/or a substantial increase in average study density (i.e. how great a proportion of full time study each student is doing each year). We do have fixed costs per student on our books, as well as costs per module studied, so if each student is on average studying more modules in a given time, our total cost per FTE would go down.
This would happen if - hypothetically - the Government decided to get people to do OU degrees in three years instead of studying at conventional universities. Our costs would be considerably less for those students than they are now. My guess is they'd come down to a bit below those for a conventional university. Enough to make a difference to the number of students the UK system could have for a given cost, but not a huge one.
Fiscally, it would make sense to pay for more OU part-time study. One of the points I was trying to make above was that although the OU costs more per FTE to teach, the students are significantly more economically active, so the net cost to the taxpayer is considerably less than conventional education.
It's not a silver bullet though. For one thing, it's not at all clear that 18-year-olds would be able to juggle their first full-time job and part-time OU study. We do have increasing numbers of 18-21 year olds studying with us already, and their completion rates are worse than any other age segment.
I'll stop there because I'm drifting off your questions again - but I hope I've at least answered them this time! Let me know if not.
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zvi and
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Date: 2010-07-19 08:55 am (UTC)Taking your first question: The bottom line is that OU costs more per full-time equivalent (FTE) student than a conventional university.
I don't have the figure to hand, but from memory the Funding Council premium for part-time students is of the order of 25% more.
There's also the fees paid by students, which are different from tuition fees at conventional universities in many ways (including the fact that you can't get a loan for them and have to pay up front, but there's a more generous financial assistance scheme for low-income students). Again, I don't have the figures to hand, and it's hard to make a perfect comparison, but from memory they're about the same order of magnitude as fees at a conventional university.
And your second question: The cost would probably reduce for increased "class size", but not profoundly. We're already operating at scale (we have of the order of 150,000 undergraduates studying with us), so the cost per student isn't a long way off the marginal cost for extra students.
Unless, of course, there was a really huge expansion, and/or a substantial increase in average study density (i.e. how great a proportion of full time study each student is doing each year). We do have fixed costs per student on our books, as well as costs per module studied, so if each student is on average studying more modules in a given time, our total cost per FTE would go down.
This would happen if - hypothetically - the Government decided to get people to do OU degrees in three years instead of studying at conventional universities. Our costs would be considerably less for those students than they are now. My guess is they'd come down to a bit below those for a conventional university. Enough to make a difference to the number of students the UK system could have for a given cost, but not a huge one.
Fiscally, it would make sense to pay for more OU part-time study. One of the points I was trying to make above was that although the OU costs more per FTE to teach, the students are significantly more economically active, so the net cost to the taxpayer is considerably less than conventional education.
It's not a silver bullet though. For one thing, it's not at all clear that 18-year-olds would be able to juggle their first full-time job and part-time OU study. We do have increasing numbers of 18-21 year olds studying with us already, and their completion rates are worse than any other age segment.
I'll stop there because I'm drifting off your questions again - but I hope I've at least answered them this time! Let me know if not.