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(Q) CIRCULARS
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
HIGHER EDUCATION MANAGEMENT INFORMATION
SYSTEM
CIRCULAR 2:
OCTOBER 2002
1
Clarification
of paragraph 8 of Circular 1 of August 2002: Concurrent registration for
courses at different levels
2
Clarification
of paragraph 7 of Circular 1 of August 2002: Reporting FTE enrolled masters and doctoral students in technikons
4
Requests for
extension to submission dates for HEMIS data for 2002
6
Calculation
of course credit values
7
Courses taken at
different levels: new directive from 2003 8
Primary
qualifications and the HEMIS student file 9
Student housing
indicator and students registered for more than one qualification 10 Mixed mode courses and FTE enrolled students 11 Notification of
future data requirements for Satellite Campuses |
This
paragraph in Circular 1 referred specifically to the practice of permitting
students who have failed courses at level n to repeat these in the following
year while taking level n+1 courses. The paragraph stated that concurrent registrations
of this kind are not acceptable to the Ministry, and must not be reported in
HEMIS. It added that adjustments would be made to the subsidy student totals of
institutions whose FTE enrolled student totals are inflated because of this practice
of concurrent registrations.
The
paragraph was directed at those institutions which have permitted, as a general
practice and even formal academic policy, substantial numbers of students to
take more than a standard curriculum load.
In some cases institutions have permitted more than half of their undergraduate
students to carry course loads equivalent to
between 125% and even 300% of a
standard curriculum, and these excess course loads have included courses previously failed as
well as the courses for which they are
pre-requisites. The emphasis in
the paragraph in Circular 1 was on substantial numbers of the kind described in
the previous sentence.
The
Ministry accepts that many institutions do permit, on a strictly discretionary
basis, small numbers of students to take course loads higher than a
standard full-time curriculum. and even to register
concurrently for a course and its pre-requisite course or courses. This is an acceptable practice, provided (a)
that the institution does not make this a general academic policy, (b) that
the institution’s undergraduate success rates are not affected adversely, and
(c) that its ratios between FTE undergraduate enrolments and head count
undergraduate enrolments remain within standard limits.
The Ministry
has begun examining the ways in which technikons
have been calculating credit values for masters and
doctoral courses, and will issue new guidelines to technikons
in due course.
Institutions
should note that extensions to the above submission dates cannot be approved by
the Ministry’s HEMIS staff. Formal
requests for extensions to these submission dates must be submitted by the
institution to the Deputy Director-General: Higher Education. Because the
Ministry expects institutions to comply with these submission dates, extensions
will be approved in exceptional circumstances only.
The
Ministry has decided that institutions will, from the beginning of 2003, no
longer be required to submit
externally audited subsidy student tables in SAPSE format. This implies that student data required for the
calculation of state subsidies for 2004/5 will be drawn from each institution’s
HEMIS submissions for 2002, and the SAPSE tables for 2001 which were submitted
during 2002. The calculation of state
subsidies from 2005/6 will be based entirely on HEMIS data.
Guidelines
for the external auditing of HEMIS student data are being prepared by the
Ministry and will be sent to institutions in due course.
Concerns
have been raised about the ways in which some institutions are determining the
credit values of courses. It has been suggested that institutions could be assigning
artificially high credit values to science and technology courses in order to
generate additional amounts of state subsidy.
It is also clear from data reviews made by the Ministry that some
institutions are using one set of credit values across all qualifications,
despite variations in curriculum requirements.
The
Ministry wishes to remind institutions of the following key points about credit
values:
¨ The credit value of a
course must reflect that fraction it constitutes of a standard full-time
curriculum for a given qualification. Even though there is no standard way of
determining what fraction a course constitutes of a standard full-time
curriculum, institutions must, in each case, adopt a methodology which is
subject to verification by external auditors.
¨ The credit value of a
course must vary if it can be offered as part of the curricula of different qualifications. Calculations will have to be made, for each
curriculum and each qualification, of what fraction the course constitutes of a
standard full-time curriculum.
7 Courses taken at different levels: new
directive from 2003
The
Ministry gives notice to institutions that the HEMIS directive about the
determining of course levels will be changed with effect from the 2003
reporting years. This directive at
present states that if a course is offered at a number of levels, then it must
be coded at the highest level at which it may be taken.
The
Ministry’s analyses of institutional data for 2000 and 2001 have shown that the
current directive has had the unintended consequence of inflating the numbers
of FTE enrolled students at masters level reported by
some institutions. These institutions have been including common sets of
courses in the curricula of postgraduate diplomas and course-work masters degrees, and have
used the present version of the directive to code all these as masters level
courses. The effect of this has been that these institutions report very few FTE preparatory
postgraduate student enrolments and in this way increase their state subsidy
claims. Subsidy students at a
preparatory postgraduate level have a subsidy weighting of 1, compared to the
masters subsidy weighting of 3.
The Ministry’s new
directive, which must
be used for all reporting of 2003 HEMIS course and student data, is this:
If a course is
offered at a number of levels, then it must be coded at the lowest level at which it may be
taken.
The
effect of this new directive will be that if, for example, a course X is
offered in postgraduate diploma as well as masters programmes,
then X must be coded as preparatory postgraduate and not as intermediate postgraduate (or
masters level).
8 Primary qualifications and the HEMIS
student file
Institutions
are reminded that only the primary qualification for which a student is
registered should appear in the HEMIS student (STUD) file. If more than one qualification appears for an
individual student in the STUD file, then wrong analyses could be made of an
institution’s head count and FTE enrolled students. Registrations for other qualifications must
be recorded in the course and registration (CREG) file only.
9 Student
housing indicator and students registered for more than one qualification
Particular
note must be taken of paragraph 8 when using the student housing
indicator. This must be applied to only the primary
qualification in cases where a student is registered for more than one
qualification.
10 Mixed mode courses and FTE enrolled
students
HEMIS
makes provision for a specific course to be offered partly by contact
and partly by distance mode.
Institutions are asked to note that the Ministry does not recognise a mixed mode when making FTE enrolled student
calculations from HEMIS data. Mixed mode courses are taken to be distance
courses for this purpose, and all FTE enrolled students generated are
classified as distance students.
11 Notification of future data
requirements for Satellite Campuses
The
Department of Education has determined a need for information on students and
staff at satellite campuses in order to generate reports for planning
purposes. Notice is being given that
institutions will be required to submit information on their courses,
qualifications, course registrations and staff pertaining to satellite
campuses.
The
Department is aware that this may require changes to registration forms and has
therefore decided that the satellite campus element will only be implemented
for the 1st submission of the 2004 data, which is due in October 2004.
The
definition for the satellite campus element and the file specifications are
being prepared by the Department of Education and will be sent to institutions
in due course.
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