Be a Smart Student – Tips for Selecting the Course Providers and Courses

Tip 1 – Objective Setting

You had better decide the field and objectives of your studies before setting out to do so. For the time being, numerous courses in a hundred of different fields are being provided by various course providers in different sizes, some of which purport to be qualified for awarding professional credentials and/or recommending students for sitting internationally accredited examinations. Some training bodies may also claim to be able to recommend students with satisfactory results in their studies to some other organizations for employment. People, dazzled and attracted by the exaggerated propaganda, may somehow sign up and pay for some courses they are not quite familiar with or interested in. It will be however time-consuming and money-wasting for them to withdraw from their studies shortly after the course commencement. Therefore, you have to ascertain what subjects you like to study and what goals you hope to attain. You, having confirmed the field and objectives of your studies, must opt for a right course accordingly and should not be influenced by propaganda or your friends.

Tip 2 – Self-assessment

After confirming the field and goals of studies, you have to deliberate about your academic level, financial situation and time allocation in order to select a suitable course. You are advised not to overestimate your capability. For example, you have to realize your academic level so as to avoid selecting a course the level of which is too high or low for you. This will waste both your precious time and money. Concerning the financial matters, although the government provides students with loans, there is limitation of eligibility for the loan application, to which you have to pay attention. [If you need more details on the eligibility for the loan application, you may browse through the relevant information on the Student Financial Assistance Agency's (SFAA) website, http://www.sfaa.gov.hk/eng/index.htm]. Students eligible for the loan application should still note the processing time. If the information provided is complete and all the required documents submitted are in order, the loan will normally be paid within 8 weeks after SFAA's receipt of your application. [Such a processing time is only applicable to the application under the Non-means-tested Loan Scheme (NLS) (for eligible students who are not covered under the Tertiary Student Finance Scheme - Publicly-funded Programmes and Financial Assistance Scheme for Post-secondary Students)]. Therefore, if the lapse between the date of your application and the payment due day for tuition fee is too short for SFAA to arrange the loan payment, you may need to pay the tuition fee by yourself first and apply for reimbursement of the paid tuition fee under the NLS afterwards. In addition, to sign up for a course costing an expensive tuition fee may tremendously increase your financial pressure in the future. From our experience, many applicants had not deliberated about their repayment ability before their application, which made some of them run into serious financial difficulties. Let us take the NLS administered by SFAA, which seems more applicable to people pursuing continuing education, as an example. Not only should borrowers repay the principal but they should also settle all the accrued interest and the annual administrative fees charged during the loan period. In view of the length of the repayment period (within 10 years by 40 equal quarterly instalments), the NLS interest rate and the annual administrative fee [as at June 2006 and chargeable one year after the drawdown of the loan], provided that your loan amount is too enormous, the quarterly repayment may exceed your repayment ability. All in all, it is prudent for you to carefully estimate your capability and make your financial plan before your application for admission or loans. Please be reminded of deliberating before action. (If you want to roughly calculate your quarterly repayment over the repayment period, you may use our online calculator at http://www.sfaa.gov.hk/eng/calc/nls/index.htm for reference).

Tip 3 - Information Gathering

Collecting course information from various channels, such as advertisements, friends and promotional leaflets, you will be able to compare courses with similar content run by various training bodies and then screen out the unsuitable ones. The course providers may demonstrate the best and most fascinating features of their courses to their customers and play down the worst. When making a decision to sign up and pay for a course, you have to avert solely relying on any single source of information. You should bear in mind the possible discrepancies between the promises of the course providers and the reality. Some course providers, touting for business, may claim that their students are eligible to apply for loan under the NLS run by SFAA. In your best interests, you have to browse through our online information at http://www.sfaa.gov.hk/cgi-bin/sfaa/course.pl?lang=eng so as to clarify whether or not a course is included in the Register of Eligible Course Providers and Courses under the NLS.

Tip 4 - Ask If You Have Doubts

You have to be of a cautious and skeptical mind in comparing the promotional advertisements of different training bodies. To verify if the promotional information is authentic and genuine, you should never hesitate to make enquiries particularly about the course content, the total amount of tuition fees, the number of instalments for the tuition fee payment, the conducting agency, the course duration, the number of course sessions, the mode of delivery, the medium of instruction and etc. Where there is any discrepancy between the promotional information and the staff members’ verbal explanation, you may request the course provider to alter the contractual terms and affix a seal thereto. Remember not to be trapped by propaganda or any verbal promise.

Tip 5 - Site Observation

After enquiring and screening out the unsuitable courses, you will be able to list the suitable ones for your site observation. Paying a visit to the course providers, you have to scrutinize their registration documents, note the classroom environment and, if approved, observe the lecture delivery. Besides, when you enquire about the course details during your visit, a pleasant and amiable staff member usually give you a detailed explanation, striving and endeavouring to persuade you to put down a deposit on the course. As a staff member of the course providers, he or she is of good knowledge about the institutions but his or her explanation may ineluctably contain errors or omit some essential information. (Staff members of a few course providers may earn their commissions on every course they successfully sell, thus tending to overstate the merits of the course and downplay its demerits.) Therefore, please bear in mind that the site observation is just for the sake of authenticating information collected and having a further understanding of the relevant training bodies.

Tip 6 - Deliberation Before Action

The training body, unlike an insurance company, does not provide customers with a cooling-off period. Once part or all of the tuition fee is paid, it will be difficult to request a refund whether your payment is made by cheque or in cash. Hence, you, though satisfied with the course provider after your site observation, should avoid any immediate payment of the tuition fee (including any deposit). You should allow two or three days to consider your options. After making your decision, you should still ward off a one-off payment of the tuition fee. Before assessing your need, you should not hastily agree to sign any contract with the course provider the terms whereof stipulate your obligation to pay the instalments regularly. In the event of your refusal to do so out of your dissatisfaction with the quality of the course, the course provider may look on it as a breach of the contract and, in turn, file a lawsuit against you. As a matter of fact, you may request a short-term studying trial wherein your payment is on a monthly basis in order that you can make sure of the suitability of the course for you before deciding to take the whole course.

Tip 7 - Retain All the Receipts

After paying the tuition fee, you have to request the issue of a receipt from the course provider. The receipt should indicate the name of the course provider, the course of studies and the monies paid. You may also attach all the promotional leaflets to the receipt in order to facilitate your future evaluation of the quality of the course. For your benefit, you should be so circumspect as to keep all of the receipts.

Tip 8 - Handle Everything In Person

In the whole process of selecting your course provider and course, you had better do everything in a self-reliant manner since it is inappropriate for other people to make any decision on your behalf. For instance, your proxies may misunderstand your expectation and may not be able to consider your situation. You should personally take care of any procedure involving money, such as the payment of the tuition fee and the application for the student loans, instead of authorizing a stranger to do so.

SFAA earnestly hopes that you can select a suitable course with the assistance of the aforementioned tips and realize your ideals through continuous education!

By the way, a handful of loan borrowers withdrew from their studies because of their dissatisfaction with the quality of the course and the occurrence of disputes with the training bodies. Under such circumstances, these borrowers, misconstruing their liability for the loan repayment, conceived that they need not repay their loans. The SFAA hereby reiterates that the borrower shall not be immune from his or her liability for the loan repayment under any circumstance, including but not confined to the occurrence of any dispute between you and the course provider over the teaching quality or anything else, your cessation of being a student or withdrawal/suspension from/deferment of the studies, your failure to complete the course of studies for any reason, and the institution's failure to provide the course on which you have enrolled for any reason. Thus, for the effectiveness of your studies and the protection of your pecuniary interests, you have to select your course provider and course with prudence.