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| Open University sets £5,000 tuition fees | Open University sets £5,000 tuition fees |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent | |
| The Open University has announced tuition fees of £5,000 per year for the equivalent of a full-time place for students in England from next year. | |
| This will mean that the Open University, which provides degree courses by distance learning, will have among the lowest fees in England. | This will mean that the Open University, which provides degree courses by distance learning, will have among the lowest fees in England. |
| Vice chancellor Martin Bean promised "high-quality, flexible and great value-for-money education for all". | Vice chancellor Martin Bean promised "high-quality, flexible and great value-for-money education for all". |
| The majority of universities will charge £9,000 for some or all courses. | The majority of universities will charge £9,000 for some or all courses. |
| More than two-thirds of the Open University's students are studying part-time - and the university will be expecting to benefit from the introduction of loans for part-time students. | |
| For a typical part-time Open University student, studying at the level of half of full-time, the fees will be £2,500 per year. | |
| Younger students | |
| At present the university has 264,000 students taking more than 600 undergraduate and postgraduate courses and professional qualifications - which it says makes it the largest single higher education institution operating in the UK. | |
| The university has reported a surge in younger students taking its degrees - increasing by a third last year. | |
| Pitching its fee below many other universities will be seen as adding to its competitive appeal for undergraduates in England facing a big increase in fees from 2012. | |
| Although the Open University's fees will be among the cheapest - this still represents a substantial increase. The current full-time equivalent for an Open University course is in the region of £1,800 per year. | |
| The government's White Paper on higher education, published earlier this month, promised a greater emphasis on competition from providers outside mainstream publicly-funded, full-time, campus-based universities. | |
| A private college with its own degree-awarding powers, the ifs School of Finance, announced fees of £5,750 to £6,000 per year, undercutting many rival institutions. | |
| The Open University, created in 1969, was first known for its television broadcasts but has become a pioneer of using online technology. | |
| Regional differences | |
| It claims the world record for the highest number of downloads from any university on the iTunes U service - currently in the region of 36 million. This service provides a free distribution of university lectures and course material. | |
| The university has also developed services overseas, operating in more than 20 countries. This includes funding from the United States to support a project to cut drop-out rates from higher education, in a pilot scheme with 10 US colleges. | |
| The fee level of £5,000 per year applies to students from England. The Open University says that it expects students in Scotland to pay a similar amount to the current fees of £1,400 per year. | |
| The university says that in Wales, the cost is "likely to be lower than in England as a result of additional support from the Welsh Government". | |
| There has yet to be a decision on future fees for Northern Ireland. |