Mapping calculation for the HESES11 re-creation based on cost centre sector norms

Outline of assigning activity to academic cost centres for the HESES re-creation based on cost centre sector norms

We expect groups of staff to be assigned to the cost centres that best describe the majority of their activity. Student FTE on both HESES and HESA returns should therefore be returned based upon the cost centre of the member of staff most directly associated with delivering the activity.

For a student studying a year of instance, different modules (or equivalent) may be assigned to different cost centres according to the members of staff delivering this activity. Where two or more members of staff from different cost centres are associated with a particular module, then the student FTE should be split according to the proportion contributed by each member of staff.

For small groups of staff (fewer than 20 staff FTEs and where they make up less than 20 per cent of the entire cost centre) it is acceptable for disparate lower-cost activities to be grouped together rather than have their own individual cost centres.

Sector norm cost centre assignments

We generated a cost centre sector norm mapping of subject activity to cost centres using HESA 2010-11 student data and cost centres (see HHCOST01-32), module activity (see HHSBJ01-32) and proportion of FTE in each cost centre x subject combination (see HHPRP01-32) that contribute towards the year of instance. To do this, we identified the cost centre to which most institutions assigned the subject activity.

This was calculated as follows:

• For each institution, the FTE for each subject area was calculated. Generally the first two characters of the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) code were used to assign module activity that counts towards the year of instance (see HHSBJ01-32) to subject areas. However, in some cases, where analysis showed that the cost centre sector norm differed when three characters of the JACS code were used instead of two characters, we have used three characters.
• For each institution, if the FTE of a subject area was less than 25, the activity was removed from the analysis to identify the cost centre sector norms.
• For each institution and each subject area, the cost centre with the largest FTE was assumed to be the institution's cost centre 'preference'.
• For each subject area, the cost centre with the largest number of 'preferences' (where the 'preferences' were greater than 3) was taken to be the cost centre sector norm.

Details of the percentage of institutions that returned the cost centre sector norm as their 'preference' for the subject area are provided in an Excel file 'percentage of institutions mapping subjects in the sector norm cost centre'. This is available from our list of HESA funding and monitoring data exercises.

Page last updated 7 March 2013