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.
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About Me
- Mike
- Hi - I'm Mike - I live in Belgium and am an Open University Student also active in the Open University Students Association. I am always on the verge of saying something important (or so I tell myself...)
Interesting that some universities don't take the same approach
ReplyDeletehttp://www.londonexternal.ac.uk/prospective_students/postgraduate/wye/rural_dev/index.shtml
and
http://www.uhi.ac.uk/home/fees-and-funding/fees
shows for online studies they have the same fees for EU students as for UK students.
Thanks for the list of other online providers you posted the other day.
Thanks Joanna for the other links. It's definitely the case as far as I can see that the OU has 'chosen' to charge us higher fees rather than been forced to do so by the UK Government: it's taken a particular interpretation of the rules and is adamant about sticking to it.
ReplyDeleteThe kind of reasoning they're using above - although I could be wrong here - is the kind of stuff they might churn out when UK students doing a second degree are charged higher following the E L Q likely changes (no subsidy after your first degree).