Fees (again)
The announcement this week by the OU that their fees will rise to some £15,000 for a full degree, have prompted numerous phone calls and emails to the OCA head office. Just to reassure OCA students and potential students, although the OU and the OCA share a similar heritage and have similar delivery models, we operate on quite different funding models. The OU has always received far more public money than the OCA and therefore their situation is more akin to traditional bricks and mortar universities. Hence the need to raise fees dramatically. The OCA has always focused on low cost delivery, largely unassisted by public money. As a charity, maintaining our low cost model without compromising quality as a way of widening access is the number one priority for our Trustees. There is further detail on the OCA situation in this post I wrote in October 2010 and essentially our situation has not changed. Course fees for OCA students will next be reviewed by our Trustees in May 2012. There will inevitably be an increase with effect from 1 July 2012, but it will not be on anything like the scale announced by the OU and other universities. It is for this reason that we are expecting the rapid growth in student numbers that we have seen in the last 18 months to continue and are investing now in the capability to support this. We will be consulting the OCASA committee in spring 2012 before making proposals to our Trustees.
Gareth Dent
OCA Chief Executive
22 July 2011
Photo: Images of Money on flickr, used under Creative Commons licence
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£5,000 NOT £15,000 for an OU degree – almost half of what most other universities will be charging and great value for money. I’m an OU Tutor (having done a degree with them many years ago) and an OCA student (so very pleased OCA fees are not rising!)
Hi Diane
I am not suggesting that the OU are not good value for money, but it is £15,000 to do a full degree. The £5,000 refers to the equivalent year cost. The OU are very clear that a 60 credit module will cost £2,500 and this is what is causing the phone calls (see: http://www8.open.ac.uk/study/explained/fees-2012 )
yes – I see that now 🙂 am too used to thinking in PA terms at the moment as I navigate my daughter through UCAS choices – but even £15k looks good compared with £27k
Hopefully you’re not a maths tutor then… the press release states £5000 per full time equivalent of 120 points.
I personally think that this will finish the OU off. Many many people who could afford to study £500 60 point modules part time will not want to pay 5 times this for the same thing, and certainly will not want to have to take out a student loans company loan for it.
Great news for the OCA though 😉
Paul says
I do say ‘a full degree’ Chris, ie 360 credits = 120×3 =>£15,000
Chris says
We’re singing off the same hymn sheet Paul, I posted before Gareth.
Chris says
Sorry I’m not sure why I thought Paul had posted that. Back under my rock me thinks…
no not Maths:-) – apologies, am used to thinking in PA costs not the whole degree – but it’s still almost half most other universities – My daughter is due to start in 2013 and £9000 PA is the norm for everywhere she’s looked so far. New OU students will be able, for the first time, to get student loans and there will continue to be grants for very low income students. Current students will have their fees protected on the old structure. Its not a situation I welcome, but seems to be a reasonable solution in the circumstances. The only area in which the OCA ‘competes’ with the OU is in Creative writing though – I would have done my studies with the OU if creative arts was taught, which it isn’t (though they are beginning to teach Design)
Agreed that it’s a very good thing they’ve extended the fees protection to current students until 2017, however, this includes any student enrolled on a course in 2011, it would be interesting to see how busy they get come the October 2011 course intake with people rushing to get a degree started whilst they still can!
Well done oca for keeping your fees low.I have been a oca student for four years now and am pleased with the way oca put the students first.Oca realise that not all students are wealthy students.And many struggle to even get a grant.Oca have shown that they are forward thinking enough to be aware of this.And that goes to show what a great college they are. Again,well done.
Karen says
Well… I would be happy with the OCA fees going up next year, if the quality and support of the courses went up, the the way the course was written would improve. Having made various attempts to complete my BA through OCA, and struggling with confusing workbooks, lack of clarity about what I actually need to do for coursework, I will be spending the money required to complete my final year at a proper college or Uni next year.
It appears you get what you pay for, and there’s a lot of things I could have done with that £500.
Is anyone else reading this doing the last year of photography? Does anyone have any idea what one does to actually complete the course?
A very unhappy customer.
Thank you Karen, I too have found my latest coursework book to be difficult to work from. I spent a deal of time reading and again reading the chapters and I felt that I was simply jumping through hoops. What would the dread asessors really expect from me?
O.K. I am bitter. My tutor indicated that I might expect an ‘A’ OR at least the ‘B’ –
and it came to pass – well that’s it – only a pass. Heigh-ho. That was my penultimate
course, I shall rest awhile before the final.
In my opinion, distance learning cannot replace the art school experience, but it certainly
has some advantages. For me it was a much belated second chance.
The post war years were grim and after one happy at Bromley Art schoo, it was decide that I should find a job, the family could no longer support the would be painter
And so… in my dotage I have decided to square the circle. I look forward……
Thanks for the info Gareth. This is very good news for everybody.
I am looking at what to do, as a current OU student I have to decide as to whether I can do a course every year till I have completed my degree, if I miss a year I understand I will be liable for the new fees of £2500 for a 60 point course which is totally out of my league – I am studying for personal goals, rather than for a career. Sometimes life gets busier so it’s not possible for me to do a course all the time. I have already thought about doing an Art History course with the OCA as they look excellent, so I may well be joining you. By the way, can I transfer any OU credits I have earned to a degree with the OCA?
Hi Sarah
You can transfer OU credits to a degree with the OCA if we have a course which ‘matches’ the module that you have done with the OU. Typically this means that OU students can transfer art history or creative writing credits but not credits from other courses.
Hope this helps.
Oh my goodness, that was quick! Thank you Paul, I will finish the course I’m doing, and then be in touch with OCA! What a helpful friendly bunch you are!!
A question about your creative writing courses – do all other universities accept your degree as qualification for entering their Creative writing Masters’ degrees? Particularly ones like Manchester Metropolitan who do on-line Masters? I may switch from the OU if I knew that were guaranteed.
re other people’s comments, I expect the OU will lose most of the ‘oldies’ like me who are doing degrees to keep sane in retirement, and make up the numbers with youngsters who can get student loans and don’t want such huge debts.
‘…do all other universities accept your degree as qualification for entering their Creative writing Masters’ degrees?’
It’s difficult to generalise and say yes, definitively all universities Trish, but yes our degrees are validated by Bucks New University and students do progress onto Masters courses elsewhere. The biggest factor that Masters Course Admissions Tutors seem to take into account is the class of degree.
Your analysis of the way the OU intake will change seems convincing, and a great pity
Am I correct in saying that OCA courses are validated by Buckingham University? Are the OCA a degree awarding body?
The OCA had for many years used the terminology ‘affiliation’to the OU because of the OU allowing OCA students to transfer credit to their OU study provided the courses were credit rated by TVU or Glamorgan and now Buckingham.
Hi Benjie
OCA undergraduate courses are validated by Bucks New New University (not to be confused with the University of Buckingham). The validation agreement was signed in 2007. Students studying with the OCA receive their degrees from BNU. The MA Fine Art programme was validated by the University for the Creative Arts last year
The OCA is not a degree awarding body (ie we do have degree awarding powers). I do not envisage us seeking degree awarding powers, largely for reasons of scale and cost – it is simply better value for students to have the quality assurance mechanisms associated with degree level qualifications provided by another institution, rather than seek to replicate these mechanisms on a small scale. (We are not the only specialist college to go down this route, for example Cleveland College of Art Design degree programmes are validated by the University of Teesside).
Which raises the question ‘why might a college change validation arrangements?’ There are many reasons, but a big one is cost. It costs money to have external validation and for an education charity looking to widen access to students by charging the very minimum in fees this can be a decisive factor. I can see this prompting a further question so will answer it here; Why do students studying for personal development, ie not towards a degree, pay the same as degree students? THe answer is that many of the costs relate not to the student but to to the course. So a student studying a level one course may not intend to study for a degree, but they benefit from the fact that the course has been through a rigorous approval process at the design stage and subsequently.
Finally, you are right that the OCA used to say ‘affiliated to the OU’ in its publicity materials, and the reason for this is that we had a bilateral agreement with the OU signed in the very early days to recognise each other’s courses. At that time it was a significant agreement. By the time I joined in early 2008 the agreement had been effectively superseded by the Credit Accumulation and Transfer scheme (where all UK Universities recognise credits from other institutions). I took the view that for those not familiar with education speak ‘affiliated to’ could easily be confused with ‘accredited by’ and therefore was best removed from our materials.
This reply is probably longer than the original article, but I hope it helps.
Hi Gareth
Just to let you know that I had applied for the MA Fine Art, but find that the huge rise in the tuition fees leaves me unable to progress with my application. I appreciate the reasoning behind the rise, but installment payments not withstanding (paying even more in the long run), I come from a low income household. This leaves me very upset and frustrated. You were my only hope for this degree.
Hi Angela
I do understand your disappointment. I know Jane has talked you through the rationale and that this doesn’t help you, but largely for the benefit of others I will explain:
For the first cohort of students through the MA the trustees accepted that we could not identify all of the costs and there would be teething problems which would impact on the students. The fee was therefore set to reflect this with a subsidy agreed from the charity’s reserves.
For subsequent cohorts, it is necessary for the fee to reflect the costs of tuition. If the fee didn’t, the only other way forward would have been to expect undergraduates to subsidise the MA programme which is not something I could countenance.
Gareth
Thanks for the quick reply. I am not upset with the OCA, merely my circumstances and fully understand and accept your reasoning. If I should eventually find the money in the future, would hope to apply again.
Just thought I could offer a useful reassurance to OU students who are thinking of switching to OCA.
As a Creative Writing tutor for the WEA and Lifelong Learning at Sheffield University (as well as the OCA) who has written references for students applying for Creative Writing
MAs at several different institutions, my experience has been, and it has been endorsed by admission tutors at two of them, that it is less a question of the standing of the institution that gives them their first degree, but rather the quality of the portfolio that supports their application.