Night Fr8,
Your post is a very good synopsis of the situation. I think you may have misunderstood one of my points though. From what I can tell, Oxford implemented assessment after 9/11. That might seem the worse time to do it from a commercial point of view, but it ensured a good quality of graduate when the recovery came and the result is a pretty impressive employment record since 2004.
My point was that now that demand for their course is quite high, they might be tempted to raise the bar. This would serve a dual purpose, aligning demand with capacity during a boom time, as well as reducing the likelihood of a refund cheque. Later they may have to lower it back down to where it is now if their enrollment drops to the point that commercial viability is threatened. This does not mean a return to the days of cheque book selection; I think Oat has seen the value of a decent standard of assessment for all the reasons you so ably pointed out and I don't think they will lower the bar to a ridiculous level.
FTE is already nearing a 12 month wait for their courses. Oat seems to be about 4-5 months wait. If they get to a year, then the assessment will expire by the time the student starts. I think we would see a raising of the bar before that would happen. The alternative would be losing business of those who don't want to wait that long. If I was faced with losing business in such a scenario, I'd raise the bar so that I got to make the decision which customers went elsewhere instead of leaving it to chance and their impatience. If a recession were then to follow, the bar could be lowered a bit without negating the usefulness of the assessment.
Perhaps I am wrong. There is an alternative way of reducing enrollment in boom times; raising the price ahead of the pace of inflation and one's competitors. Oat does have the highest price, but it only seems to rise about 2.5-3% annually, so I don't think they use this method to align demand with supply, at least not yet.
Last edited by Adios; 23rd January 2008 at 22:35.