Report 02/25

Assignment of departments to academic cost centres 2001-02

Display assignments by academic cost centre

Display assignments by institution

Executive summary

Purpose

1. This report gives details of how higher education institutions assigned departments to academic cost centres in returning their statistical data for 2001-02.

Key points

2. Institutions can use this information for comparison with management information statistics published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

3. The information in this publication is based on institutions' own decisions regarding their assignment of departments to academic cost centres. The supply of this information should not be regarded as an implicit acceptance or approval of the assignments.

Action required

4. No action is required.

Background

5. Information by academic cost centre has a key role in determining our funding allocations for teaching and research, so it needs to be accurate and prepared on a consistent basis by institutions.

6. HEFCE Circular Letter 02/02 asked institutions to provide details of how they assigned their departments to academic cost centres for the academic year 2001-02.

Mapping departments to academic cost centre

7. In general, a department is assigned to a single academic cost centre. Departments may be split across cost centres, but only if the institution can show a clear divergence between different sections of the department from one of the following five criteria:

1. Similar cost structures for teaching.
2. Similar cost structures for research.
3. Similar expenditure patterns for capital expenditure.
4. Academic coherence in terms of academic disciplines of staff.
5. Similar rates of funding for research grants and contracts.

8. Where a department spanned more than one cost centre, institutions were asked to indicate the proportion attributed to each.

9. A summary of the responses on how departments are mapped to academic cost centres is given in the tables referred to in paragraph 13.

10. Statistical information by cost centre is reported in the following Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) returns:

1. Finance Statistics Return (FSR) Table 4 (Research grants and contracts - breakdown of income by cost centre) and Table 6 (Expenditure by activity).
2. Individualised Student Record, and Non-credit-bearing Course Record, where a number of fields identify the cost centres which provide academic input to the current year of the course/programme of study or the modules taken by students.
3. Individualised Staff Record, where the principal cost centre of each academic member of staff is returned.
4. Staff Aggregate Record.

11. The information in this report is a snapshot of each institution's organisational structure. Changes may have taken place subsequently.

12. We expect to ask institutions to update their assignment of departments to cost centres annually.

13. The information is summarised by cost centre and by institution:

• Display assignments by academic cost centre
• Display assignments by institution

Enquiries

14. Enquiries should be referred to Laura Eastman at the HEFCE (tel 0117 931 7419, e-mail l.eastman@hefce.ac.uk).