Introduction

1.     In April 2009 Universities UK member institutions were invited to take part in the our annual survey of tuition fees for full-time International (Non-EU) students. Ninety member institutions supplied data (a response rate of 69 per cent). The profile of institutions who responded closely matches that of Universities UK members as shown in Table 1.

2.     We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who responded, without whom we would be unable to carry out the survey.

3.     The questionnaire remains largely unchanged from the previous year. Additional questions on deposits required for international students have been introduced however, to gather information on the growing use of deposits in relation to the recruitment and admission of international students, partly as a consequence of the new points-based immigration system.

4.     Fee levels have been rounded to the nearest one hundred (using standard rounding procedure) and outputs based on responses of less than five institutions have been excluded in order to ensure a robust analysis.

Analysis of responses by qualification type and level

5.     A summary of fee levels reported is shown in Table 2a for Undergraduate students and Table 2b for Postgraduate students.  These give summary statistics for fee levels, differentiated by level of study (undergraduate / postgraduate and MBA) and type of degree (taught degree, diploma, certificate, research degree). A distinction has also been made between type of provision by the following groups:

• Classroom based courses;
• Laboratory or workshop based courses;
• Pre-clinical programmes;
• Clinical medicine;
• Clinical dentistry; and
• Other fee levels.

6.     Not all respondents submitted information for all data fields.  The percentage of respondents who provided details for each type of provision are identified along with the upper and lower quartiles, median, and 5th and 95th percentile (as a measure of dispersion) of fees across all institutions who responded.

Analysis of results

7.     An analysis of responses to the additional qualitative question is provided in Table 4.    Again, not all institutions provided details for all questions.  The proportion of institutions that did not respond to each question is also shown.

8.     Table 3a for Undergraduates and Table 3b for Postgraduates provide a comparison of results from the 2008/09 survey and the current survey for 2009/10. In order to enable a robust comparison only those course types which received a significant response rate (greater than 50%) are shown. All figures are expressed in cash terms with the figures providing an indication, rather than a direct comparison, of changes to fee levels over the last year.

9.     Histograms showing distribution of tution fees across institutions are included for the following degree types (highlighted in light blue in Tables 2a and 2b):
      ·     Undergraduate Degree Students: Classroom based courses;
      ·     Undergraduate Degree Students: Laboratory or workshop based courses;
      ·     Postgraduate Taught Students: Classroom based courses;
      ·     Postgraduate Taught Students: Laboratory and workshop based courses;
      ·     Postgraduate Diploma: Classroom based courses;
      ·     Postgraduate Research Students: Classroom based courses;
      ·     Postgraduate Research Students: Laboratory or workshop based courses; 
      ·     MBA: Classroom based course.