CELL Vital statistics

1
CE/LL Vital statistics

• Completion and retention of part-time students

2
Background

• No national data collection (except module
  completion for Wales which shows ???)
• Two issues
• completion of assessment on short courses
• Retention on courses/modules/programmes

3
Responses

• University of Bath
• University of Nottingham
• Sunderland University
• Lancaster University
• Edinburgh College of Art
• Glasgow University
• Kingston University
• University of York
• City University
• University of Warwick

• University of Glamorgan
• University of Reading
• University of Teeside
• Aberdeen University
• University of Liverpool

4
Completion of assessment within short course
programmes

• In 1994 the funding of CE/LL provision was
  mainstreamed - changed from funding all
  students on short courses to only funding those
  on credit bearing courses leading to a HE award
• In 2002 this was further clarified and defined as
  students who underwent formal assessment such
  that if they pass the assessment they will be
  awarded credits where defined as completing
  and therefore funded
• Four years on it is interesting to see where that
  has brought us to

5
Impacts

• Different institutions adopted different
  strategies
• reshaped their programmes in different ways
• Introduced assessment and credit accumulation
  systems
• Mixture of credit and non-credit bearing
  provision
• As usual in CE/LL different patterns

6
Overview of short course completion statistics

• All 16 institutions had short course programmes
• 4 were largely or completely non accredited
• 1 consisted largely of (accredited) summer
  courses
• Disciplines covered arts humanities and some
  social sciences, languages and 4/5 with some
  science provision (1 was purely art design)
• Contact hours/credit weight largely 2hrs per
  credit with the typical course being 20hrs for 10
  credits, but credit weight varying between 5 and
  20

7
Completion statistics

• Variation in accounting
• No. enrolled (on modules/courses or on
  programmes/qualifications)
• No. started
• No. fulfilling attendance requirements

8

• Highly likely that institutions who responded
  were those with higher completion rates
  (anecdotal evidence of several other institutions
  with completion around 50)
• High levels of completion within short course
  programmes is not necessarily what all
  institutions want, as FTEs can (be seen) to be
  used more profitably in other parts of the
  institution.

9
Overview of Certificate of Higher Education
Retention/completion statistics

• 7 of the 14 institutions had CertHE programmes
• Disciplines covered arts humanities, social
  sciences, sciences, counselling
• Numbers of courses varied dramatically
• One institution has up to 250, another 40
• Cluster have 5/6

10

• 3 of the 7 had extremely high retention rates
  (between 85 and 100) comparable to full-time
  completion rates (young/mature students)
• But this is because of the reporting mechanisms
  and programme registration systems i.e. done on
  a modular basis
• Other 4 institutions cited a wide spread of
  retention rates between 30 and 70

11
Overview of Diploma of Higher Education
Retention/completion statistics

• Only 3 of the 14 institutions had DipHE
  programmes
• 2 of these were institutions with high retention
  rates at CertHE (due to reporting mechanism)
• But the 3rd had a noticeable higher retention at
  DipHE stage than CertHE

12
Overview of Degree Retention/completion statistics

• Only 4 of the 14 institutions had Degree
  programmes
• 2 of these were institutions with high retention
  rates at CertHE (due to reporting mechanism)
• The 3rd recorded a 70 retention rate while the
  4th noted distinct variability in different years
  (e.g. 50 in one year and 70 two years later)

13
Does any of this tell us anything?

• Not enough data, especially for CertHE, DipHE and
  Degree programmes. So yet again we must fall back
  on data relating to OU students.
• Short courses cluster of institutions that have
  succeeded in getting 70 completion rates.