We’ve added fee and salary information to the offer details shown in Apply.
The issue
The advice on consumer protection law for higher education providers says that total course costs should be provided as ‘pre-contract information’ before a candidate accepts an offer.
We require providers to indicate the tuition fees for each course they add to Publish. They can also specify additional costs, such as for making a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
This means that candidates can find out about the total course costs:
- when they view the course details in Find
- directly from providers, who may repeat the information or give further details outside the digital services
We decided that showing details of fees in Apply would help us to more clearly meet the guidance on consumer protection. We also decided to show details of salaries where appropriate.
What we changed
In May 2022 we updated Apply to include the fee or salary information taken from Publish. It’s shown on the ‘offer details’ page.
For courses with a fee, we show the fee for both UK and international students if both have been specified. We cannot be certain which fee would apply to the candidate.
For courses offering a salary, we show the text that was entered by providers in Publish. This often refers to a pay scale.
Further work
We could do further work to allow Apply to show more specific and accurate information about course costs. We could:
- prompt providers to detail all extra costs
- ask providers to say when making an offer whether the candidate would pay the ‘home fee’ or ‘international students fee’
- give candidates more details about how the unqualified teacher pay scales translate into salary ranges