An entertaining story in the Education Guardian:
Foreign students charged hugely inflated tuition fees, survey reveals
Universities and colleges in the UK charge international students vastly inflated fees to study at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, according to new figures compiled exclusively for EducationGuardian.co.uk.
The Royal Veterinary College, Imperial College London and Oxford University charge international students more than £17,000 a year for undergraduate courses.
This compares with £3,070 a year charged for undergraduate courses for home and EU students and the highest public university fee for postgraduate study of £9,500 at Manchester University.
Now granted that this is based on a range of publicly available data from institutions and has some accuracy. But the core assumption, that it is the International fee rather than the Home/EU fee which is wrong, is unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. And why even bother doing this at UG level where there is capping (different in different parts of the UK) on the Home/EU fee?
Random thoughts..
It’s interesting that, despite the increase in numbers of UK students in UKHE, that a UK degree is still seen as such a ‘must have’ by international students.
When the UG fee cap is lifted, it’ll be interesting to see how we respond with pricing for our PG courses.
Given that a PG qualification is something that makes graduates stand out from the crowd, is there a case for charging them more?
There is probably some research out there somewhere that shows what a PG qualifcation can do for income. Are we doing enough to make our students aware of the benefits of PG study?
Maybe, in slight contrast to my ealier thought about charging higher fees for PG study, we should be offering massive incentives to our current ug’s to take PG study here, i.e. more than just the alumni scholarship we already offer?