![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Open University fee increase
Jul. 21st, 2011 05:53 pmI don't understand how the Open University can justify its fee increase.
From the annual report, at the moment it gets about 40% of its income from fees and the rest from the state. With the fees it was charging in 2009-10, it had a surplus equal to about 15% of its fee income.
I get the impression that the OU is one of David Cameron's pets, and I haven't seen any statements that its state funding is being substantially reduced.
Increasing the fees is likely to reduce the number of students, but presumably they've modelled this and expect to end up with a higher total income; and a lot of the OU's costs are proportional to the number of students, so the surplus would go up enormously.
From the annual report, at the moment it gets about 40% of its income from fees and the rest from the state. With the fees it was charging in 2009-10, it had a surplus equal to about 15% of its fee income.
I get the impression that the OU is one of David Cameron's pets, and I haven't seen any statements that its state funding is being substantially reduced.
Increasing the fees is likely to reduce the number of students, but presumably they've modelled this and expect to end up with a higher total income; and a lot of the OU's costs are proportional to the number of students, so the surplus would go up enormously.
