Dear Colleagues

I would be most interested to have any views about your policy or practice
in the following hypothetical (maybe not so hypothetical) scenarios. Thank you.

Take a FT home undergraduate student who has been assessed by his/her LEA as
paying nil fees in 98-99.  The student withdraws on 30 November 1998.  Under
the rules, the LEA does not have to pay any part of the #1k fee they would
have paid this year.

The question is, What should the university charge the student?

Some unis, of whom we are one, normally charge the student for each semester
started.  So, in this scenario, our present policy is that we would charge
the student # 500.  However, we may re-examine this policy because it could
be argued that where the LEA has assessed the student for nil fees the
student is by definition from a low income background & therefore it would
be iniquitous to charge the student half fees for the year.

In another (related) scenario, the LEA has assessed this student to pay only
# 10, and the LEA would have paid # 990.  Not totally improbable, because
the way in which the means-testing is done means that income bands are very
narrowly defined and there is a huge range of student and LEA fee
contributions to the # 1k fee. (I have actually seen an assessment for LEA =
0.01p and the student # 999.99 - I kid colleagues not!)

My hypothetical student withdraws on 30 November, so the LEA pays no fee.
Should the uni charge the student # 10?  or arguably # 5, which is the half
fee that would normally be charged where the student withdrew in semester A.


If the uni did charge the student only what the LEA has assessed him / her
as liable to pay, then I can imagine a lot of other (non home FT degree)
students who withdraw and then vociferously question why they should pay
half fees in semester A when our hypothetical student pays only # 5 or # 10.
Clearly, there are two conflicting principles at work here  :  EITHER charge
per semester started and don't worry about low income students.  OR take low
income as your starting point and don't worry about the withdrawal date or
charging pro-rata for tuition received and costs incurred by the uni, or
about the loss of fee income to the uni if you decided to charge the student
in either scenario only the fee assessed by the LEA.

Any views welcome!!  Has anybody faced a dilemma similar to this?  I don't
recall seeing any DfEE guidance on this point, am I mistaken?



Philip Hinchliff	Assistant Registrar (Student Finance)
		Room LB159, Main Building, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane,
		Hatfield, Herts AL 10 9AB
		
Tel.	01 707 28 6167 (within UK)  or	+44 1707 28 6167 (outside UK)
Fax	01 707 28 4993 (within UK)  or	+44 1707 28 4993 (outside UK)

E-mail	[log in to unmask] 		



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