Hello all,

I would be interested to learn how other universities' Continuing
Education/Lifelong Learning departments structure their student fees,
particularly with regard to concessions for disadvantaged groups, older/retired
students, full-time students or whatever. 

(This relates to the shorter courses provided by most CE/LL departments [i.e.
ones where the students do not become eligible for Access Funds or that p/t
fee-waiver scheme - whatever happened to that, by the way?])

There used to be a pattern common to a number of universities of a full fee, a
first concessionary rate for retired or over 60s, and a second concessionary
rate for those on benefit.

Do you still (if you ever have) use this framework of fees?  If so, what are
the relations between the different fee bands (i.e. what proportion of the full
fee are they?).

If you have a different structure, could you briefly explain how it works, and
if you changed from the above structure, how was it received by students?

If you offer concessionary rates, which groups of students are eligible, and
how do you determine their eligibility (do you take them at their word, ask for
documentary evidence of benefit or whatever [and how does that work?], go in
for full means-testing)?

Where you offer concessionary rates, how do you fund the discounts?  Or do you
simply assume a certain number of enrolments in the concessionary categories
when doing fee income projections and so skirt round the question of how the
discounts are funded?  

Do you offer bursaries to students who would otherwise not be able to pay.  If
so how do you fund those?

Do some types of course (e.g. IT) have a higher rate of fees, and do you allow
concessions on those (if so, it is to the full range of concession types?)?

Finally how, if at all, does your standard fee rate relate to the undergraduate
tuition fee?  Will your fees rise in line with the increase in the
undergraduate tuition fee?

Apologies that this is not a particularly structured questionnaire: these are a
number of issues that have been swirling round my head of late.

The reply options for the continuing-education list are set to reply to sender,
so your responses should automatically be to me and will be treated in
confidence.  If I get sufficient responses to make it meaningful, I'll post an
anonymised summary to the list.

Many thanks for your help,

Andrew
-- 
Dr A J Stevenson
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/exaajs/
Departmental Administrator
Department of Continuing Education
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/conted/
Lonsdale College
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YN
Tel.: 01524-592640
Fax: 01524-592448



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