Can I reallocate funds awarded by DSA?

I've just received my DSA award. The DSA supplier is grossly overcharging for items that I can purchase as a non-student for far cheaper.

They provided a quote for a PC worth £300 for £520. How can the universities allow this?

They want £99 to set up a LAPTOP and show me how to use Windows FFS!

£30 for a backpack, that can be bought for £19.99 online

£35 for anti virus, when we all know that Avast! is free for non commercial use.

£156 for a Dictaphone that is worth a little over £100

£376 to show me how to use Dragon's Naturally Speaking. I CAN read instructions FYI.

This allowance is awarded to myself not the supplier, do I have any say in where I get my uni equipment from?

I've just received the purchase order in the post and I nearly fell through the floor. I would like to intervene before the order is processed. Surely, if I can find the same items cheaper, saving money for the DSA, I should be allowed to do so?

Can anyone advise further advise me on this?

Many thanks.

Reply 1

Fabio Bingley

In addition the Needs Assessment Report cost £482.05. This was for someone to spend 20 MINUTES in my home, ask me a few questions then submit a written report of their findings. And we wonder why the education system is vastly underfunded...

bump

I had no say in any of it, just had to provide them with receipts to prove I'd bought exactly what they told me to..

Reply 4

River85

Original post by Fabio Bingley

Producing a report takes more effort than that. You ask how universities can allow this but it has got nothing to do with universities and their funding.

If you don't want the training then you aren't obliged to take it. I didn't bother (given that I was already familiar with how to use Windows and Microsoft Office having had a PC since 1994 for goodness sake...)

As for finding cheaper alternatives then ask them. But this won't free up money you can spend elsewhere.

Reply 5

dsa_assessor

Original post by Fabio Bingley

I've just received my DSA award. The DSA supplier is grossly overcharging for items that I can purchase as a non-student for far cheaper.

As a DSA Assessor, let me play Devils Advocate for a second :-)

They provided a quote for a PC worth £300 for £520. How can the universities allow this?

Did this price include extended warranty and insurance? (it should)

They want £99 to set up a LAPTOP and show me how to use Windows FFS!

It will not be to show you how to use Windows, It will be for the supplier to deliver, setup, and check all kit over before leaving.

£30 for a backpack, that can be bought for £19.99 online

That is rich - the ones I spec are £17.50

£35 for anti virus, when we all know that Avast! is free for non commercial use.

True, and I'm not saying Avast is inferior, but assesors and suppliers want to offer the best protection for your machine over the duration of a course, so sometimes it better to go for a well known commerical product, and that price will include a certain amount of yearly updates, to take you to the end of your course.
Beleive me, i've had students in tears in my office, becuase they were running an antivirus which was not updated, and did not catch a new deadly virus - cue a lot of heartache and lost work

£156 for a Dictaphone that is worth a little over £100

Asessors and suppliers generally spec Olympus digital recorders - they make the best quality, plenty memory and decent mics....you want the best quality lecture recordings right? That £156 sounds exactly right to me for the Olympus DM550

£376 to show me how to use Dragon's Naturally Speaking. I CAN read instructions FYI.

Is that the only piece of assistive software you got? - I cant emphasiese how important the training is for these bits of software, they are tolls to help you at the end of the day, so its important that assessors and trainers are confident you know how to use them to their best potential. However, £376 is steep - we charge £45 per hour at my uni, and most students get around 4 to 6 hours training, depending how many piece of assistive software they received.

Hope this helps explain things, but happy to answer any other queries :smile:

Reply 6

dsa_assessor

Original post by Fabio Bingley

That is shocking - my needs assessments last at least 1.5 hrs, sometimes over 2 hrs.

You should report this to DSA-Quality Assurance Group

http://www.dsa-qag.org.uk

There are very specific guidelines we have to follow, and it sounds like your assessor is obviously not following them, it is impossible to carry out a full needs assessment in 20 minutes, if they are doing their job properly.

Reply 7

dsa_assessor

or SAAS if you are in Scotland

http://www.saas.gov.uk/

Reply 8

RA3

My DSA recommendation was for Microsoft Security Essentials. I pointed out that its not really adaquate and they told me tough luck!

Reply 9

ebird33

Speaking from experience re the equipment, yes it comes with warantee etc. Take full advantage of training, dragon is a great piece of kit but so tempremental on my laptop. I also got read write gold and a few other bits and bobs including dictaphone. Again, dependent on trainer it's useful. I was lucky, I had a chap who used dragon to high levels, it works well for him. He showed me and got me doing stuff on both dragon and the other packages that has helped immensely. Take any training offer up is my advice, yes you can read instructions but having someone to go through it and get you through the quirks of dragon is priceless!

Reply 10

ebird33

Re. Costs: the price given, surely that's for x amount of hours? I had my training for 2 hours as I couldn't cope with a full session and had the sessions weekly then tapered out and I got full email support from the trainer.

Reply 11

dsa_assessor

Original post by ebird33

You are quite correct ebird - we charge £45 per hour for training to funding bodies (that's cheap compared to the common suppliers like Iansyst, MKC, Microlink etc) and it is very in depth, much more than you would get from just reading the manual and we tie it directly in with your course materials.

After the official training allocation has been used up (the amount of hours required is guaged by myself), a student is quite free to drop in or email with follow up queries, or even have a little refresher session.

Reply 12

BigV

My assessment took over an hour and the report itself was very accurate, totalling 33 pages (a lot to write up, plus they have to chase up quotes). So the £525 cost doesn't seem so bad when you think that probably the best part of a weeks work has gone into it.

Supplied items like this will always be a little more expensive than you could purchase it for online from the cheapest source - that is because they have to throw in all sorts of backup support, delivery costs, warranty and what not.

My quotes were similar for things like the computer and laptop and the prices for those didn't really surprise me or seem excessive; what did surprise me was the cost of the note taking (£21ph), study skills support (£57ph) and MH support (£57ph), but only because you just know that the people actually taking notes or providing support are getting nowhere near those rates, so someone is skimming off a nice profit out of their labour right there.