EBS: students = 8000 & faculty = 11 ???

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Newbie2DL, Dec 4, 2002.

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  1. Newbie2DL

    Newbie2DL Member

    In a previous post on past papers, the good Prof Kennedy stated: "The shift over is taking an enormous effort from our scarce resources - 8,000 students and 11 faculty and no subsidies."

    Take 8000 students who each pay approximately £8000 in fees for an MBA. £64,000,000! With a faculty of 11? How can a faculty of 11 support 8000 students? Subsidies? It's hardly a charity?

    Does anyone else here know this? What are your thoughts?
     
  2. telfax

    telfax New Member

    A strange world in the UK!

    I don't know where you are located but the funding of British universities, and the departments/faculities which they comprise, are funded in strange ways! In the institutions in which I have worked as a university researcher each department was responsible for securing its own funding and then absically 'rented' its office space and secretarial support from the university's central administration. How did this work? In essence, the university creamed off nearly 60% of the grants obtained. The only way to get round this was to put in to the funding agencies/bodies an additional 60% for 'overheads'!

    Is the current 8,000 for EBS the total number of students having gone through the programme or the present number in the programme'? I donlt know. Either way, as faculty generalyl are paid on a fixed national pay scheme they wonlt be pocketing too much if any) of any surplus - it will be the university!

    'telfax'
     
  3. Yan

    Yan New Member

    As far as I understand, many part-time tutors are involved in DL programmes and are responsible for tutorials, marking of assignments and examination papers. However, those part-time tutors, not permanent staff, are generally not included in the University faculty.
     
  4. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Job creation?

    Newbie2DL:
    EBS specialises in distance learning for its MBA, with a small on campus MBA programme (c.200 students). There are 8,000 dl students, which is equivalent to 1,500 full time students. We work four not three semesters and faculty, like support staff are expected to work everyday on the campus.

    About 40+ per cent of our external students attend various degrees of campus supported learning, from fulltime through part time to occasional'drop ins'. These students are facilitated by FT faculty of these institutions located in several foreign countries and are vetted by the university's quality control procedures and designated as 'Approve Tutors'. They play no part in the central work of EBS in Edinburgh.

    In addition, our course writing faculty numbers about 30 and they work, in the main, FT in other universities in the UK, North America and Europe. The non-campus authors play no role in the central work of EBS in Edinburgh.

    In addition we have numbers of senior faculty from other universities who act as External Examiners in three year tours. They also play no role in the central work of EBS in Edinburgh. Hence, none of the above are counted in our salaried establishment

    The core academic staff at EBS numbers 11. Our administration and IT is about 25. In the past four years almost everything has been moved to the Internet and all our procedures in-house are run on proprietary software. The eMBA also features Faculty Web Boards for student faculty contact and we have an active student-student web board (Wtaercooler) independent of EBS.

    The MBA programme is fully scalable; the courseware, printed and electronic, took 10-15 years investment to be fully self-supporting for distance learners (hence, my assertion that our model is about distance learning not distance teaching).

    Your surprise at our staff/student ratio suggests that you are unacquainted with distance learning scale economies, which in our case we have 12 years experience of running.

    Your arithmetic is faulty - it is more accurate to take the annual graduation of c.1,000 MBAs a year as indicative of our income earned over 2-3 years. All our income (as an educational charity under UK law) is re-invested in the programmes and the university. We receive no subsidies from government.

    It is not clear what your point is. All this is in the public domain, annually audited by the university and accounted for under law.

    So what is your point? In informing us, perhaps you could also reveal your qualifications for judging how a Business School should be run. How many staff should we have, and what, besides the laudible role of 'job creation' would they be doing all day?
     
  5. John Roberts

    John Roberts New Member

    Prof Kennedy, I admire your patience and tenacity to stick with the constant barage hitting at HW. You know the guys on this site are keeping it up in terms of getting a rise out of you, and I would suggest, that is unless you want to keep doing it, to stop defending HW or its programmes, since most of the info is probably available from EBS administration directly?.

    Basically you've done your job on letting everyone know and in every possible way your personal opinions on the DL MBA at HW, including at times possibly giving away internal info that could not have otherwise been sought from HW's administration directly.

    Now for my question to add to NewbieDL: In the past 12 years was it 64,000 students that went into the MBA DL, and what was the drop out rate of incomplete graduates, and what was total fees paid during the last 12 years.

    If you could respond, this should answer the balance of the questions related to Finance numbers since you have already disclosed almost all other information for the board for us to calculate the Value, expenditures & P&L of the HW DL MBA program, Brit funding to EBS etc, that is if it is of any consequence anyway.

    J.R(ic)
     
  6. Michael Lloyd

    Michael Lloyd New Member

    Out of curiosity, what possible use does a resident of Toronto, Canada, have for this information, and since you do not pay their salary directly or indirectly via UK taxes, why should the Professor and/or EBS staff compile this information for you? Leaving aside for a moment that this may be considered information sensitive and proprietary to the business school.

    What is your business case for requesting this, other than to satisfy your idle curiosity? Will it influence you to enroll there? Will it benefit the school or past, present or future students to provide this information to you? Where is the cost/benefit ratio in favor to the school and its stakeholders?

    I get similar questions for malpractice data all the time, usually for someone writing a paper or article, and if it takes more than five minutes of my time, I don't bother. They can do their own research from publicly-available resources and learn something in the process to boot.

    Regards,

    Michael Lloyd
    Mill Creek, Washington USA
     
  7. uncle janko

    uncle janko member

    Professor Kennedy: Thanks for an interesting post on the inner workings of a competent DL institution.
     

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