How to tell us about your fees and student numbers

In your access agreement:

You must clearly state the full-time equivalent (FTE) tuition fees you intend to charge for all your fee-regulated courses in your relevant access agreement, including:

 

For part-time students, the FTE fee means the fee per 120 credits (equivalent to a full year of study), or fee for the duration of the programme if fewer than 120 credits. The FTE course fee is not regulated for part-time courses, but this information will help us to better understand your part-time fee structure.

Where you have different fee levels for different courses, these must be set out at each different fee level – for example, by degree type where you have different charges for first degrees and sub-degrees; or by subject or faculty groupings.

Your fees must not exceed the Government’s fee caps and must comply with the Government’s student fees regulations.

The fee regulations prohibit any institution from charging a part-time student more than £6,935 in an academic year, regardless of how many credits are taken or the intensity at which the student studies. Therefore:

Where you are not clear about whether you will have any part-time students paying more than the basic fee, we recommend that you include a statement in your access agreement so that you avoid having to seek OFFA approval retrospectively. This might apply, for example, where a part-time student took more modules in a year than was normal, or because they switched from full-time to part-time. You can do this by including a general commitment to spend an appropriate proportion of any income from part-time fees above the basic level on access measures. In such circumstances we would not require any predicted data or targets from you relating to these students, but you will need to report, in your monitoring return, on any unexpected spend that occurs.

EU students

EU students are currently fee-regulated in the same way as home students. You should include EU students in any financial predictions that you supply to us in respect of fee income.

Withdrawals

You may take account of withdrawals by reducing the number of students in the following year. For example, if you had 100 students charged a particular fee in a particular year and estimate that 10 might not continue into the subsequent year, simply exclude these 10 students from your numbers of students in that subsequent year.

Franchised provision

In a sub-contractual (‘franchise’) arrangement, franchiser institutions are responsible for reporting on their franchised courses.

When completing Table 1b of your resource plan for franchised courses, please select the name and UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN) of the franchise partner that delivers these courses from the drop-down list. If you are delivering courses on behalf of another organisation as part of a franchising agreement do not include these courses in your access agreement and resource plan. These courses must be recorded in your franchising partner’s return.

Related guidance and resources

Fees and student finance: minimums, maximums and thresholds

How much should you invest?

Providing information to prospective students