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.