South African College for Open Learning: A Model of an Inservice Distance Education Programme for Initial Teacher Education (CIE, 2002, 37 p.): 8. Costs of the SACOL Programmes

South African College for Open Learning: A Model of an Inservice Distance Education Programme for Initial Teacher Education (CIE, 2002, 37 p.)

		(introduction...)
		Multi-Site Teacher Education Research Project (MUSTER)
		List of Acronyms
		Abstract
		1. Introduction
		2. Overview of Development of Teacher Education at SACOL
		3. Context in which the data was collected
		4. Data Collection and Analysis
		5. Overview of the College
		6. The Initial Teacher Education Curriculum and its Evaluation
		7. Students' Aspirations, Expectations and Preparedness
		8. Costs of the SACOL Programmes
		9. Key Issues from the SACOL Case Study
		10. Concluding Remarks
		References
		Appendix One: Student registration at SACOL for 1999 and 2000
		Appendix Two: Results for certificate courses
		Appendix Three: Results for diploma courses
		Appendix Four: Higher Diploma in Education
		Appendix Five: Further Diploma In Education
		Appendix Six: Categorisation of academic staff into faculties and departments
		Appendix Seven: Buildings and infrastructure at each campus
		Appendix Eight: Diploma In Education: Structure (10 Cotep Credit - 360 Saqa)

8. Costs of the SACOL Programmes

In determining the cost of the programme we can look at salary costs, operating costs and capital expenditure. The operating and capital expenditure costs come from the fees. The salary cost per year is around R24 million⁸. SACOL collected R13 million in fees for the 2000 academic year and of this used R9.96 million for operating expenses and R2.2 million for capital expenditure. Therefore the cost per student works out at around R5900. SACOL considers these students as a full-time equivalent. Therefore the full time equivalent cost per student is R18 000 (R5900 x 3).

⁸ This has been determined by assuming the average cost per academic staff is R130 000 (there are 133 academic staff) and the average cost per administrative staff is R75 000 (there are 94 administrative staff).

The SACOL student fees are R1000 per year for the certificate course and R1450 per year for the other courses. SACOL considers that the fees charged make the programme accessible to students.

SACOL operates on two campuses which are 75 km apart. The two campuses are not computer networked and this means there is not easy access among staff members to enhance the quality of the programme. Having two sites also means that the programme is financially expensive, and because staff in departments are split between two campuses this could lead to an inefficient use of time.