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).