Tuition fees 2012: what are the universities charging?

Universities are starting to announce their tuition fees for students in 2012. How much are universities planning to charge?

Here is our list of universities and how much they intend to charge in tuition fees from next autumn.

A growing number plan to charge £9,000 per year – the maximum possible. This has raised fears that the government will have to claw back funds from universities – possibly by reducing the number of places on degree courses – if the majority of institutions charge the maximum.

The latest universities to announce their 2012 tuition fee plans are:

• Oxford Brookes University has released a variety of fees for 2012-13. The average fees will be £8000 but some courses creep up to £9000. The university stated that it would be reducing the number of on-campus student places by around 10% to 15% (around 1,000 places) to "ensure more high-quality contact time between students and staff". These places will be redistributed to courses run by the university and further education colleges, at a lower cost of around £6,000.

• Nottingham University has become the latest of the Russell Group to declare the maximum £9000 fees.

MPs voted in December to allow fees for UK students on undergraduate courses to rise from £3,350 a year to £6,000, and £9,000 in "exceptional cases."

But ministers assumed that universities would charge different levels of fees and that the average, across more than 130 institutions, would be £7,500.

The government pays students' tuition fees in the first instance. Graduates pay the government back when they are earning more than £21,000. If the average fee is higher than ministers anticipated, the government will end up paying more up front, and this may not be sustainable.

So far only a handful of institutions (announced so far) have published plans to charge less than the maximum. Liverpool Hope University has said it intends to charge below £9,000, but has not finalised its plans.

Vince Cable, Business Secretary, announced in Parliament:

the introduction of a fee cap of £6,000, rising to £9,000 in exceptional circumstances

Universities that charge more than £6,000 must set out targets to widen their pool of students beyond white, middle-class teenagers. These must be agreed by the government's access watchdog, the Office for Fair Access.Universities and colleges have until Tuesday 19 April 2011 to submit their access agreements to Offa. They will then assess their agreements and announce all that have been approved by 11 July 2011 - so the fees below are the amount universities are intending to charge. These will be updated as further universities publish their plans. 

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/25/higher-education-universityfunding

Indian talent pool in US waiting to be tapped

Most Indian students in the US plan to return home with a desire to give back to the motherland, offering a vast pool of talent that would bring top-rate higher education to India's young, a new study suggests.

India needs to recruit at least one million new faculty members for its college and universities if it is to meet the government's goal of making higher education available to 20 percent of young people by 2020.

India thus may be able to recruit some of the academic talent it needs from the more than 100,000 Indians currently studying in the US, suggests the study by Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).

The survey of nearly 1,000 Indians who are either pursuing or have completed graduate study in the US found that only eight percent strongly prefer to remain in the US.

A majority, or 53 per cent, of them planned to return home from the United States after a few years of work, while 21 per cent said they were either in India already or were actively looking to return. The rest are undecided.

India's booming economy, better chances to secure a good job, the promise of an affluent lifestyle and being closer to family were the factors fuelling the movement home, the survey said.

The study finds the biggest factors deterring master's, PhD students, and post docs from returning to India are red tape, corruption, and absence of research opportunities, it said.

"The results are surprising and encouraging for Indian universities," said David Finegold, dean of the Rutgers' School of Management and Labor Relations, and one of the study's authors.

"We expected that more students would lean heavily toward remaining in the US. But our results suggest many young academics would be interested in pursuing a faculty career in India, if policymakers can address some of the key issues facing the Indian higher education system."

The study identified four key factors affecting the decision to return to India: Quality of life, career growth opportunities, hurdles like red tape and corruption, and a desire to give back to the motherland.

Just one of these four factors - the desire to give back - is strongly associated with a desire to return to India, it said.

"This study suggests some concrete steps that the government can take to address the large and chronic shortages of qualified faculty in India," said Dr. B. Venkatesh Kumar, a co-author of the study who is a Professor at TISS in Mumbai and visiting Penn State this year as a Humphrey Fellow. 

The authors offer a number of proposals that could help India attract new faculty, including creating a new Teach for India Higher Education fellowship programme to provide two- to three-year teaching positions for recent US PhD graduates. 

This could have the twin benefit of filling faculty shortages in India and helping new PhDs in the US who are struggling with a tight job market caused by cutbacks in public higher education.

Other policy proposals include developing leaders for Indian higher education, improving India's academic talent pipeline and enhancing the quality and transparency of higher education governance,

Also suggested are providing research opportunities for as many faculty as possible, raising the quality of state universities and private colleges, providing government-sponsored graduate fellowships and improving the staffing process in Indian universities.

source:http://www.indiaedunews.net/International/Indian_talent_pool_in_US_waiting_to_be_tapped_13687/

Top in Sri Lanka winner collects award in Cambridge

We recently had an opportunity to meet a former Cambridge student from Stafford International School, Sri Lanka who is now studying at the University of Cambridge.

In November last year, Ayushka Nugaliyadda won an Outstanding Cambridge Learner Award for her exceptional performance in her Cambridge International A Level Psychology exam. She was unable to attend the ceremony in Sri Lanka, and so we presented the award to her in Cambridge instead!

Our photograph shows Ayushka receiving her Top in Sri Lanka award from former member of the University of Cambridge International Examinations Syndicate, Dr John Guy OBE (left) and Warden of Robinson College, David Yeates (right).

Ayushka, who is studying Economics at Robinson College, says she chose to study Cambridge International A Level Psychology in order to broaden her outlook. She also took exams in Accounting, Economics, and Maths with Statistics – achieving A and A* grades in all subjects – and so wanted to study a subject that did not have a business focus. She said the University found her subject combination unusual, but she had no problem applying and they recognised her qualifications.

So how did she find her Cambridge International A Level studies? ‘I liked the syllabus’, she said, ‘it was diverse at International AS Level and became even broader in the second year.’

Ayushka only applied to UK universities, however she would like to return to Sri Lanka to pursue a career in developmental economics. On the day we met, she had had her first lecture in developmental economics and found that her psychology studies were relevant to the topic. She said: ‘The lecturer explained that psychological factors – such as happiness – are a consideration in developmental economics. It is surprising to find how my psychology studies will help me with my economics degree.’

Ayushka said it felt good to win her Outstanding Cambridge Learner Award. We wish her all the best for her future studies and career.

source:http://www.cie.org.uk/news/features/detail?feature_id=37411

Exeter University becomes the first outside Russell Group to charge maximum fees

Exeter has become the first university outside the Russell Group to announce that it will charge the maximum £9,000 fee for a degree from next year, saying it will need the extra income to meet higher expectations from students.

Exeter, which follows Cambridge and Imperial College London in confirming plans to treble fees, also said it would offer fee waivers or bursaries for students from less well-off backgrounds. Ministers have said the maximum fee should only apply in "exceptional circumstances".

David Allen, Exeter's registrar and deputy chief executive, said: "By setting our fees at the £9,000 level we are able to continue to invest in the student experience, and spend a lot more money to bring in more people from less well-off backgrounds.

"We are talking about having more academic staff, improving the staff-student ratio, more contact hours. What we're doing is to try and give the best possible experience to our students."

Exeter is a member of the 1994 group of smaller research-intensive universities, which includes East Anglia, York and Leicester. Its decision will increase pressure on similar universities to opt for maximum fees to maintain their prestige. Some universities in this group are looking at whether to charge varying fees for different degrees.

Universities minister David Willetts said that institutions would only need to charge £6,000 to cover the costs of arts and humanities students, whose courses are cheaper than science or medicine.

He said: "The maximum allowable charge of £9,000 in 2012/13 would actually represent an increase for them of over 40% even after inflation, as against an increase of 20% or so for the other disciplines."

But Exeter said it would have to raise fees simply to maintain the same quality of teaching. Allen said: "Our own calculations show that we would need a fee of at least £7,000 just to stand still.

"I think you have to bear in mind there will be much higher student expectations, they will expect to see more staff, have better facilities, as more of the onus on paying for their education is coming on to them after graduating."

When fee waivers are taken into account, the average tuition fee would be less than £9,000, the university said. The fee announcement does not cover the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, which is a partnership between Exeter and Plymouth Universities.

The college lecturers' union, the UCU, said that the average fee needed to replace government funding cuts would be £6,863 for universities offering arts and humanities courses to break even. Sally Hunt, the UCU's general secretary, said: "Our own research shows to replace the money he [the government] has cut, the average fee needs to be almost £7,000. The government urgently needs to look again at the severity of its university funding cuts."

Universities could face a change in the law to stop some of them from charging students £9,000 a year if too many institutions are "clustering their charges at the upper end", the government warned last month.

• This article was amended on 2 March 2011. An editing error inserted references to Exeter as outside the top 20 in the Russell Group. This has been corrected.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/mar/02/exeter-university-to-charge-top-fees

Dalai Lama to address Mumbai University students

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will address around 500 students the MumbaiUniversity here on Friday, a varsity official said.

"The Dalai Lama will talk to students on 'Ancient Wisdom, Modern Thought' and then take questions from them," the official told the sources.

"The university had initiated talks with the Dalai Lama to address students. He gladly accepted and gave us a date," he added.

Dalai Lama will also meetuniversity officials and academicians from different departments.

This is his first visit to theuniversity, the official added.

Dalai Lama will also attend another programme inMumbai organized by the Bihar Foundation and deliver a discourse on the occasion.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Maharashtra/Dalai_Lama_to_address_Mumbai_University_students_13540/

Oxford and Cambridge to join £9,000 club on fees

Students whose family income is below £25,000 would pay £6,000 and receive a maintenance bursary of up to £1,625
 

Cambridge university wants to triple fees in autumn next year.
Senior managers at Oxford and Cambridge universities are intent on charging £9,000 a year in tuition fees, the maximum allowed, it has emerged.

A consultation paper shows Cambridge wants to almost triple fees to £9,000 as soon as it can in autumn next year. The university will charge the maximum of £3,375 for this autumn.

Students whose family income is below £25,000 would pay £6,000 and receive a maintenance bursary of up to £1,625, under plans from Cambridge's working group on fees, published internally for consultation. Means testing will taper this £3,000 reduction to zero when family income exceeds £42,000.

Oxford's pro-vice-chancellor, Tony Monaco, has said fees of less than £8,000 would lose the university money because of national cuts to teaching and other grants. He told a Congregation, a formal meeting of senior members of the university, that Oxford subsidised undergraduates by £80m.

"That is already straining research and infrastructure ... Were we to charge £9,000, the additional income would be £14m a year." This would be used to improve outreach activities and waive fees for the poorest students.

The university calculates that to waivefees for the poorest by £3,000, would be the equivalent of charging all undergraduates £8,500. Oxford will make its decision on fees in March.

David Willetts, the universities minister, has said fees of £9,000 will be allowed only in "exceptional circumstances". MPs voted to raise tuition fees in December, after the Lib Dems pledged in their manifesto to scrap fees. The government loans students the fees until they graduate and are earning £21,000 a year.

Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, said: "We can now expect a race to the top now as universities rush to gain kudos by joining the '£9,000 group' as quickly as possible. How long before the most expensive start asking for the freedom to charge even more?"

The Cambridge report argues that even at £9,000, the university is still "carrying the burden of a significant loss per student … To charge less than the maximum would be fiscally irresponsible. Most if not all of our peers will charge the maximum."

A university spokesman said: "This report has been published online for consultation … It follows due consideration by a working party made up of senior academic, college and student representatives."

Universities are expected to raise fees to at least £6,000. They have to submit their plans to the government's Office for Fair Access, which can decline proposals.

New universities say they will be forced to raise fees to more than £6,000 because of cuts to teaching funds, and are concerned that students from low-income families will not be able to afford them.
Language shortage

Universities must urgently address the country's shortage of linguists, the British Academy warns. There is a growing mismatch between supply and demand in language skills, it argues in a report – Language Matters More and More. The situation has worsened since the academy's previous warning in 2009, it said. In 2010, 57% of UK pupils took no language at GCSE, while the number of A level language candidates fell by a quarter. There is a higher proportion of privately-schooled students on language courses than ever.

 

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/09/oxford-cambridge-9000-fees

Georgia puts up Russian language barriers in schools

English is being pushed onto syllabuses in a bid to break with a powerful neighbour to the north
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Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili launches the country's English language teaching programme at the start of the new school year. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters

With Alexander Pushkin's framed visage on the wall and creased editions of fellow Russian literary giants on dusty shelves, Natela Chokhonelidze's office recalls a very different era at Georgia's state university.

"We once had a staff of 50, and now there are five, because there aren't many students," said the 70-year-old professor emeritus at the university's institute of Russian studies. "Russian language is fading out," she quipped, "with me!"

Chokhonelidze is on the losing side of a deliberate shift in the former Soviet republic as its pro-western leadership tries to supplant Russian with English as the default second language of 21st-century Georgia.

Last month hundreds of native English speakers joined the first day of school as teaching assistants under an ambitious programme to have every child aged five to 16 speak English. English is now compulsory and Russian optional.

The aim appears pragmatic in a globalised world where English dominates and Georgia's investment-driven economy is seeking partners in Turkey and the European Union.

It fits neatly too, however, with President Mikheil Saakashvili's policy of dragging the Caucasus country of 4.5 million people out from Russia's orbit, two years after war shattered already fragile ties between the neighbours.

"We're a free and independent country and our people are free and independent. It's their choice which language to learn," said education minister Dmitry Shashkin, an ethnic Russian, in English.

The government plans to recruit 1,000 native-English speakers by the end of the year on $272 per month, eventually building up to one per school.

English "opens many doors", said Shashkin. "Georgia doesn't have oil, Georgia doesn't have natural gas. The resource we have is our people, the intellectual potential of our country."

On the streets of Georgia's capital Tbilisi, where blue European Union flags flutter outside the parliament building, all Georgians over the age of 40 speak Russian fluently. Shopkeepers are happy to converse in Russian. The younger, educated generation, however, prefer English, and can even bridle if you attempt to talk to them in the language of Georgia's powerful northern neighbour and adversary.

Much of this is generational. Students entering university now were born after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The influence of western pop culture and the internet is strong.

So too is the fallout from the deterioration in political relations with Russia since Georgia's 2003 Rose Revolution swept aside the ex-Soviet old guard and brought Saakashvili and his team of English-speaking ministers to power.

He set Georgian sights on joining Nato, to the anger of Russia. Political ties collapsed with the 2008 war, when Russia crushed an assault by Georgia's US-trained military on the rebel pro-Russian region of South Ossetia.

Trade links are minimal. Visa requirements and torturous travel routes have strained ties between family and friends.

"Taken in the wider context ... it seems there is a political element behind this," said Shorena Shaverdashvili, editor of Georgian weekly Liberali.

English should be taught, she said, but "Why replace one [language] with the other? This is our neighbourhood and the common language with our neighbours is Russian."

Georgia is now leading the retreat of Russian language in the post-Soviet Union. But Russian remains the lingua franca across much of the former Soviet empire. It is still understood and spoken from Moldova in the west to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in what was once Soviet central Asia. In the cafes and bars of Dushanbe, Tajikistan's pleasant capital, middle-class Tajiks are more likely to talk to each other in Russian than in Tajik.

In communist times, Russian was taught in Soviet schools as the "language of communication between nationalities". For any ambitious student, especially in more far-flung parts of the Soviet Union, Russian was an essential springboard to a good university education and professional career.

Critics question the wisdom of relegating Russian to a third tier, pointing out that the quality of English teaching in Georgia and other independent post-Soviet countries is often very poor.

At the university, Chokhonelidze laments the passing of an era, and the generations brought up on reading Pushkin, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. "I fear in a few years when those grandfathers and grandmothers aren't around, nobody will bother."

The answer, said 20-year-old mathematics student Nugzar Barbakadze, is simple: "I can read Russian books in Georgian."

source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/12/georgia-teaches-english-over-russian