Job Discussion Forums

[Longton]

A Syrian friend wants to do a one year full-time MA In TEFEL / TESOL at a UK university. Fees range from �9,000-10,000. Is it possible to negotiate fee discounts with UK universities? He wants a campus university and Lancaster looks suitable. Any other suggestions for places to study? Thanks.

[stillnosheep]

I've never heard of fee discounts being negotiable for overseas students. If your friend could demonstrate EU connections (residency via family connections?) then perhaps an argument could be made for EU student fees.

Lancaster is OK (as a place) a little (=very) small and quiet as a university towns go but great location between Morecambe Bay and the Pennines, with the Lake district near, and so close to Yorkshire...

Superb scenic railway route over the Pennines to White Rose county...

[spiral78]

Birmingham's also got an excellent program, but I don't think fees are negotiable.

Why should they be? Your foreign friend isn't likely to hang around in Britain to pay taxes for long, or to benefit the country in other significant ways....

I'm from the US, have an MA from Bham, and had to pay what I had to pay...I can't muster amy good argument why British taxpayers should have subsidized my degree

[007]

[Longton]

My friend will be classed as an overseas student. The UK taxpayer will not be subsidising his fees but he will be helping to subsidise the fees paid by UK and EU citizens. I asked the question about discounts because I know language schools pay agents up to 25% of course fees for every student they send to a particular school. I had heard that educational agents also get a fee from the UK university for every student that enrolls through the agent. If you buy a car for �10,000 you would negotiate the price so why not try and do the same when 'buying' a course? With a recession now in UK, and the likelihood of fewer international students enrolling in October 2009, now might be just the time to ask.

[Pelican_Wrath]

[JenR]

Even with an MA, be careful.

I applied to Liverpool's campus in China and it was pathetic. The Academic Director told me he did a UK distance learning degree. It makes me want to re-think the value of distance learning after meeting him (and his following emails!)

[katers]

www.findamasters.com

i was looking for TESOL MAs there the other day and there seem to be many universities in the UK that offer this course.

[Chris_Crossley]

[Englishish]

Yes, but the rules say that 'temporary' absences from the UK don't count. The problem is that there are no set rules as to what qualifies as temporary. I think it would be worth arguing that a one year contract working abroad is a temporary absence. (After all, it's got a definite time limit on it.) Therefore working abroad in different countries on temporary contracts should also be considered temporary. Even being considered non-resident for tax purposes doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't 't get home status for paying fees. (At least, that's the theory!)

Oh course, if you have a home address in the UK, it might be better to try and use that. Don't know how/if it would work though. I've spent the last 4 months trying to get my tax sorted out as my tax office keeps sending my info back and forth between the departments responsible for resident and non-resident tax because they can't decide which one should deal with me. The resident department sent my forms to the non-resident department after 2 months. After 2 more months, they decided my spending 2 weeks in England during one tax year meant that I was resident after all and sent them back again. Aparently in depends on the reason for my returning to the UK. That really stumped me! I didn't realise I had to have a reason! Now all my forms have been passed to the department that has no phone number for them to decide! Still waiting to hear from them! I suspect residency/non-residency status decisions will only ever work out in someone else's favour!

For more info on home/overseas status for fees (unrelated to tax issues!), see here:
http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/student/info_sheets/tuition_fees_ewni.php#box6

[Phil_b]

[Englishish]

Phil, that's great to know. On that basis, if I got turned down from one place I think it would definitely be worth applying to another to find somewhere with a more flexible interpretation as I suspect it would vary from one place to the next. I don't have property/children/family abroad so I can't see any reason they could class me as overseas just because I work abroad on 1 year contracts - regardless of how little time I've spent in the UK. In all fairness, having your family with you while you work overseas shouldn't really count against you either but hey - I'm obviously a naive idealist and optimist!

Funny catch in the rules is that your reason for coming back to the UK can't be for the education! So the fact that I want to get better qualified so that I can eventually settle down in the UK in the distant future could actually work against me if I gave that as a reason!

I still suspect it could be a problem if I wanted to do a distance MA while working (and therefore having residence) abroad though. (Obviously I'm a paranoid, cynical type of naive idealist and optimist!) I would be good to have a clearer idea though, if only for me to plan where to work in the coming years. i.e. to decide to work within the EU for a few years before doing my MA. (As a Brit, I ought to take advantage of the ability to work in the EU anyway considering how many people would love to and can't.) If anyone else has any personal experiences, please feel free to chip in!

[Phil_b]

If you like legal texts, this might make things clearer:

http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/student/info_sheets/ordinary_residence.php