The Big Curve

Lots of talk in OUSA-Land today about fees and the like.

This article here http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/docs/ROPS-2-Douglass-BigCurve-11-12-08.pdf kind of backs up my personal view that Europe will follow what America does ie the marketisation of education will result in loads of different prices over here.

It mentions the Gravier case - this and other cases are discussed in Anne Pieter van der Mei's 'Free movement of persons within the European Community' - my impression as a non-expert is that it is all a fairly grey area.

Distance learning in Germany and the OU experience there

Just thought I would stick in a link to this http://www.fernuni.me/blog/studium-an-der-open-university.html - it's in German only (written by two of my OUSA colleagues) but is a really good blog about the student experience in Germany plus the development of distance learning in general. Thanks Marcus and Christian.

Students rights

The European Students Union (OUSA is not a member) has produced (with the help of the European Commission) this statement of student rights http://www.esib.org/documents/publications/Project%20Publications/LOTR-publication.pdf


Universities of course don't have to follow them.

ICDE EADTU joint conference this weekend

The International Council for Open and Distance Education and the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities are holding a joint conference this weekend.

The programme is here http://www.ou.nl/eCache/DEF/1/99/498.html - as you can see there's quite a heavy O U involvement.

Open University reasons to charge differently

Here is some official reasoning from last year's financial report available by hunting around on www.open.ac.uk/foi



Whereas other UK universities charge very high fees to overseas students choosing to study in the UK, The Open University provides its teaching to overseas students in the countries in which they are resident, either directly or in partnership with a range of educational and commercial organisations, at fee levels that are acceptable in each market.


This is interesting as (1) it is a change in tack from the usual reason given (lack of government funding) and (2) it is against OUSA policy.

Plymouth University

.........is big on the subject of distance learning.

They have this useful list of online resources and institutions offering distance learning around the world http://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/distancelearning/resources.html

If you look at Europe, we seem kind of underdeveloped, or at least dominated by the Open University and just a few other players.

E-voting

....is no doubt the way ahead.

If you look at this magazine http://www.e-voting.cc/ then you'll see that the Austrian Student Union elections have been pioneers here.

One of the slogans is 'I can shop online, so why can't I vote online', but the system is maybe still a bit cumbersome.

Basically though, there is loads of activity here, including a Conference in London in June.

Comparison of fees

http://hubpages.com/hub/Comparison-of-cost-of-higher-education-around-the-world

http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/6986

The above links are good not necessarily because they are up-to-date or comprehensive but because they show unwitting evidence of how people outside a particular country see that country's universities.

Just a rough guess, but it looks as if the OU is about as expensive (for overseas students) as a US university would be (for residential students).

Outcome of Bologna Conference

Here is the communiqué from yesterday's meeting of Higher Education Ministers dealing with Bologna http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/conference/documents/Leuven_Louvain-la-Neuve_Communiqué_April_2009.pdf

There's a lot for the OU (and OUSA maybe) to digest - not sure for example distance learning fits in with the sector ensuring 20% of its students travel abroad (a 2020 target), but maybe some kind of virtual equivalent with other European universities could be devised.

Religious Initiatives

http://p9445.typo3server.info/events.0.html

http://forum2008.ifeseurope.org/post_conf/projects.php

Two typical student projects above - the Christian one gets EU funding (I assume) and the Muslim one is bigger.

From an OUSA point of view there's maybe not much to say as both things are youth-oriented.