Memorandum 35
Submission from the Open University Students
Association
STUDENTS AND
UNIVERSITIES
1. Executive Summary
1.1 This submission confines itself to the
aspect of the report dealing with the adequacy of funding and
student support packages.
1.2 There is no objective justification for the
continued discrimination against part time higher education students.
1.3 This discrimination blights the opportunities
of students and potential students at the individual level.
1.4 At the level of society it undermines the
espoused values of lifelong learning and responsible citizenship.
1.5 At the level of the economy it undermines
the objectives of achieving a world class skilled workforce.
1.6 We think that the artificial, and increasingly
meaningless, divide between so-called full time and so-called
part time students should be ended.
2. Brief Introduction to Submitter
2.1 OUSA represents all students registered
to study with the Open University. This includes approximately
172,000 students from the UK.
3. Factual Information
3.1 We have on a number of occasions asked government
representatives for a definition of part-time students. It will
doubtless be clear to this Committee as to why we have not been
furnished with a meaningful response.
3.2 At this juncture, we would suggest that the
only meaningful definition of part-time students is the one which
is used to prevent our students, and thousands of other students
like them, from having access to the same level of financial support
as those defined as full-time students.
3.3 There appears to be considerable misinformation
and a lack of high quality, factual information about this category
of students. Although we acknowledge the considerable improvements
that have been made in financial support for our students from
the late 1990s, it is a fact that those students who don't qualify
for such support have to pay the whole of their study costs up
front. The overwhelming majority receive no support from their
employers. In our experience, most undergraduates studying without
support or encouragement from their employers are doing so to
enable them to have the opportunity for a career which can develop
and use their potential. We can't see that any amount of persuasion
of employers is going to have any impact in such cases. At the
same time such students are seldom in the kind of paid employment
which makes it easy for them to fund what can be a considerable
sum in course fees before coming to the range of other costs involved
in studying. There also appears to be no understanding that even
students studying from a distance have to have some time when
they can be free of child and dependent care in order to concentrate
on their studies, or have to fund travel considerable distances
to take part in day schools and tutorials. It is sadly a commonplace
for us to deal with students who are having to take time out of
their studies for no other reason than that they can't afford
to continue, either at all or in the shortest time they would
be capable of achieving their award, but for want of the funds.
At the level of the individual, this seems to us to be an appalling
way to treat those who are taking responsibility for their own
learning and achievements.
3.4 On a related point, our students exemplify
those people who can turn aspirations for a culture which promotes
lifelong learning and responsible citizenship into reality. Logic
suggests that they should be supported rather than having financial
obstacles placed in their way.
3.5 Whilst our students, like other part
time students, have a range of objectives in studying, it is clear
to us that a considerable majority have very clear vocational
purposes. We are aware that much has been written about the contribution
which part-time higher education students are already making to
the economic imperative of up skilling the work force. It is also
clear that for a wide range of reasons, not only financial, this
mode of study is going to be increasingly important to any aspirations
for a workforce skilled to compete on a world class basis in the
future. If that is true, the sense would be to provide incentives
to support and encourage such students instead of seeing the continued
divide between part time and full time as providing a convenient
way of saving money.
4. Recommendations for Consideration
4.1 OUSA commends the views of our colleagues
in NUS who made this statement in their excellent report "Broke
and Broken" published in September 2008 "There should
be no review of the current HE funding system that does not include
serious consideration of part-time issues. Talk of a genuine learning
society is cheap unless it is matched with a structure for part-time
study that is fair and accessible. A new settlement for part-time
learning is therefore desperately needed."
4.2 OUSA believes that the continuing divide
between the treatment in financial support of part-time and full-time
students is discriminatory, arbitrary, anachronistic and dysfunctional.
We hope that the committee will share this view and conclude that
it should be ended without further delay.
December 2008
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