"What we need to do is migrate people from free, to low cost, then to high-cost courses," she said.
They are full-time, full-cost courses of study, usually taught by regular faculty in the regular college rather than in continuing education departments.
Speaking to vice-chancellors at Universities UK's annual conference in Leeds, Clark said the current £9,000 fee "broadly covers the cost of education for most courses in most institutions and there are arrangements to support high-cost courses".
Ms. Scarbrough, 39, is among hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers who are taking advantage of the nation's nearly 1,200 community colleges, with their low-cost courses and local campuses.
Elite research universities can provide low-cost courses and badges without threatening their own business models, which rely heavily on research financing and a selective, intensive residential experience for undergraduates.
Clear bureaucratic restrictions out of the way and, in line with the trusty post-Thatcher theory, new "providers" would spring forth to answer "customer" demand for high-quality, low-cost courses, shaking up lacklustre former polys and techs, in the same way that Richard Branson and the mobile phone moguls are remembered as having shaken up BA and BT.
He told the roundtable the government was also keen to encourage low-cost alternatives to conventional university education: "There is provision for FE colleges that want to work with bodies such as the OU or others to provide flexible part-time, low-cost courses to have maximum incentives to do so".
She acknowledges that it is not possible to offer higher-cost courses such as engineering or bioscience – but the college does offer a range of subjects at degree level, including sports and sports injury treatment plus many arts-based courses which can be taught in a standard classroom setting.
At these centers (and online at this Web site, the agency offers free and low-cost courses for careers ranging from substance abuse counseling to computer programming.
SJSU's pilot with Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is supposed to usher in an era of super-low-cost courses for the masses — without sacrificing quality of instruction.
Third, start-up Internet firms, such as Coursera and others, are partnering with institutions to offer free or low-cost courses, often complete with exams, certifications, and different forms of teaching assistance.
