Introducing the new International Foundation Year
Welcome to our first newsletter of the new academic year. A fresh cohort of international students has just commenced their degree studies at the University and already our attention turns to the 2011 intake! As always, we will seek to update you about various developments here in Bath in the months ahead and there is plenty of information to communicate. However, we wanted to focus this edition of the Agents’ Newsletter on one particular item – the new International Foundation Year.
Those of you who attended the Agents Conference last November will recall that Andy Howman mentioned that the University was looking at its undergraduate pre-degree provision with a view to recruiting more Foundation Year students. Following a competitive tendering process, a Consortium of Further Education Colleges lead by the City of Bath College (provider of our existing Foundation Year for the past decade) successfully bid to offer an enlarged programme called the International Foundation Year (IFY), commencing with the 2011 intake. The University was impressed by the combination of existing expertise and the prospect of involving additional partners in new locations.
You will imminently receive copies of the IFY brochure in the forthcoming agents mailing and you can also find an extensive website, complete with application form, via the link below:
http://www.bathfoundationyear.com/
Some of the aspects to our revamped Foundation provision which we hope you will find make the provision attractive to prospective students include:
• In addition to the pre-existing opportunities to study at City of Bath and Wiltshire Colleges, applicants now also have the option to study at Chichester College or Greenwich Community College in London
• There is no longer any need for students to apply through UCAS
• Guaranteed progression onto all of our undergraduate degree programmes for successful students*
• More flexible English proficiency requirements
• An increased number of partial scholarships, both for new IFY students and those who perform exceptionally well on the IFY and progress onto a Bath undergraduate degree
• An enhanced social programme, which will bring the students from all the partner colleges together for certain events, including taster visits to the University campus
The International Office at the University of Bath will continue to support recruitment into the Foundation Year. However, the Consortium is also maintaining their own outreach operation and will administer the application process. Commission payments to agents upon successful recruitment of students to the IFY will become the responsibility of the Consortium. The Consortium recognises that recruitment into pre-degree courses such as this is especially competitive and in order to seek to provide a good incentive to representatives they are prepared to offer an enhanced level of commission for all new Foundation Year students with the exception of those seeking onward progression into the School of Management. The commission for non-business students recruited to the IFY will be 15% (for School of Management students it will remain at 10%). My colleague Sarah Pigott, Programme Director for the International Foundation Year, will shortly send through a draft contract, inviting you formalise this arrangement. The International Office for its part will send you a letter confirming this change to our existing agreement and that IFY commission is now payable by the Consortium. All other aspects of our contractual arrangements with you will remain unchanged and this includes the entitlement to claim a further 5% commission from the University of Bath for every IFY student you recruited who subsequently progresses on to one of our degree programmes.
I hope you find this new provision a welcome addition to the Bath portfolio. If you have any questions about the IFY please feel free to contact either Andy Howman in the International Office (A.Howman@bath.ac.uk) or Sarah Pigott at City of Bath College (PigottS@CityBathColl.ac.uk).
*As before, there is one exclusion. The BSc in General Architectural Studies will not be available, although the programmes in Civil Engineering and Civil and Architectural Engineering are.
Commission
If you are due a commission payment for 2010 admissions, please send through your preliminary list of new registrations to Graham Waton (G.W.Waton@bath.ac.uk) in the International Office and he will confirm the status of your students, allowing you to send through an accurate invoice.
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