Foreign Perspectives

With massive cuts all around us it’s interesting that the BBC has picked up on a study by the Sutton Trust to the effect that were current student charges (ie for non-OU people) raised from the current £3k to £7k there’d be potentially an 80% drop in students studying.

That would be fine were those universities the only kids on the block but the existence of the OU raises an interesting option. Right now, you can study full-time at the OU for around £1200 to £2000 for most courses and even for law it’s only £4000-odd. Thus even now it’s cheaper than normal universities (for comparable or better quality education too).

Now, although the OU is the biggest university in the UK with around 200,000 students, there are more like 2 million students in the UK at the moment. Somehow, I just can’t see the OU being able to cope with what could potentially be close to ten times the number of students. Oh, over a period of years I’m sure it could manage but not in one fell swoop.

For other universities, “too many” students wouldn’t be a problem as they could simply turn down students once “enough” had been reached. However, the OU lets students sign up for courses online up to a month or two before courses start with, apparently, no student limits being applied. Existing students can even sign up right up to the course start date.

I suspect that it might be prudent to sign up for courses a little earlier than normal this year as any increase in student fees seems likely to result in a swing towards the OU which is going to have to put out the “no vacancies” sign at some point.