module during 2009/10 was DD101 An introduction to the social sciences (7,512 students), followed by AA100 The Arts Past and Present, B120 An Introduction to Business Studies, K101 An Introduction to Health and Social Care and Y163 Starting with Psychology.
=== Fees and financial assistance ===
17,634 students received financial assistance for their studies in 2015/16. The typical cost for United Kingdom-based students of a Bachelor's honours degree at the OU was between £3,780 and £5,130 in 2009/10. From September 2012 the Government reduced its funding for all students residing in England and fees went up to compensate. English students pay higher fees than those living in the rest of the United Kingdom. The average cost of one full-time year or 120 credits rose to £6,336 in 2021, bringing the cost of an average Bachelor's honours degree for an English student to £19,008. (European Union and international students pay more as the university does not receive government funding for them). The most important revenue stream to the Open University is now academic fees paid by the students, which totalled about £157 million in 2009/10 and £248 million in 2015/16.
=== Qualifications awarded ===
The university enrolled fewer than 50,000 students in the 1970/71 academic year, but it quickly exceeded that number by 1974/75. By 1987/88, yearly enrolment had doubled to 100,000 students, passing 200,000 by 2001/02 and 250,000 in 2009/10. Numbers fell when the fee regime changed.
Cumulatively, by the end of 2009/10, the OU had educated more than 1.5 million students and awarded 819,564 qualifications after successful assessment.
In addition, the Open University provides certification for qualifications at Ruskin College in Oxford and Richmond, the American International University in London, a private liberal arts institution. (Until 2008, it provided the same service for the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland).
=== Open University Student Union ===
Whilst the governance bye-laws gives its name as the …
