[Unistats] Commencement date for RTS students who have upgraded or downgraded

[Sue Clark]

Andrea,

Yes, I have battled with this upgrade problem too.

Under the DEST "commencing student" definition, a student who upgrades from 
a Masters Research to a PhD is a commencing student, and the commencement 
date should therefore be for the PhD.  However, under the RTS guidelines, 
the same student is only entitled to a total of 4 years RTS funding.  This 
could be interpreted to mean the commencement date should be at the start 
of the Masters Research degree.

If you use the Masters Research commencing date, then you do NOT meet the 
DEST student collection requirements but you do meet the RTS guidelines and 
you can track the eftsu used under RTS correctly and easily.

If you use the PhD commencement date, then you meet the DEST student 
collection requirements but the RTS eftsu requirements need to be tracked 
individually student-by-student otherwise the RTS guidelines will be 
breached.

I have interpreted this differently for different students depending on 
whether there was an interval between candidature for the degrees and 
whether the thesis title appeared to be the same/similar for both degrees.

There are no easy answers and I imagine that all universities interpreted 
this in varying ways.

There does not seem to be the same problem for downgrades because neither 
the DEST student collection nor the RTS guidelines considers them to be 
commencing students.  Therefore you use the original start date and track 
the eftsu from there.

Sue Clark.

At 12:37 PM 17-06-2002 +0930, Andrea Matulick wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>We are curious what commencement date other institutions have reported
>for RTS students who have upgraded or downgraded their enrolment
>(Masters to PhD or vice versa). DEST's documentation on commencing
>students (and commencing RTS students) has been re-written. It is not
>specific, but seems to suggest the date of the transfer should be
>reported as the commencement date. Our student records system is
>currently set to give us the original commencement date for these
>students.
>
>Does anyone else see this as a problem?
>
>
>--
>*************************************************
>Andrea Matulick
>Management Information Analyst
>Office of Planning and Development
>The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005
>Ph    : +61 8 8303 7570
>Fax   : +61 8 8303 4873
>e-mail: andrea.matulick@adelaide.edu.au
>**************************************************
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_____________________________________________________
Susan Clark
Manager, Statistics
Resources Office
James Cook University
Townsville  QLD  4811
Phone:  07 4781 5954
Fax:    07 4781 4035
Email:  Susan.Clark@jcu.edu.au
http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/Planning_and_Statistics/index.html