Report 98/65

Assigning departments to academic cost centre: 1998-99

Executive summary

Purpose

1. This document asks institutions to inform us of any changes they have made in their assignment of departments to academic cost centres.
   
2. We will use data derived from these assignments to inform our funding allocations for teaching and research. They may also be published as management statistics. It is therefore important to ensure that they have been prepared on a consistent basis.
   

3. Key points
   

4. Institutions submitted their assignments last year in response to HEFCE 97/25, and we published them in HEFCE 98/19. In addition, we sent individual statistical reports to all institutions comparing their outcomes for 1996-97 to sector averages.
5. Institutions should use this information to reconsider their assignments, and inform us of any changes.
   
6. Changes to HEFCE 97/25 are listed in paragraphs 14 - 18. Academic cost centres are listed at Annex A. These, and the underlying principles for assigning departments to cost centres, remain unchanged from HEFCE 97/25.
   
7. We will send each institution details of its current assignment, at the same time as this document. An electronic version can be downloaded and saved in a spreadsheet format, from the following internet address:
   

8. Action required
   

9. Amendments should be returned by 18 December 1998 to:
   

10. Keith Harris
    Analytical Services Group
    HEFCE
    Northavon House
    Coldharbour Lane
    Bristol BS16 1QD
    

11. Please notify us if there are no changes to the current assignment.
    

12. Background
    

13. Circular letter 31/98 summarised cost centre statistics for each institution, drawn from the 1996-97 returns to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Institutions were invited to check their data and confirm the accuracy of their submissions. Sector summary statistics on unit expenditure by academic cost centre were listed in Table 3 of that circular letter. Institutions should use these statistics in considering their assignment of departments to academic cost centres.
14. Our funding method for teaching funds similar activity at similar rates. Activity will be measured in terms of full-time equivalent (FTE) student load in each of the academic cost centres, aggregated into four broad price groups.
15. The consultation on our funding method for teaching gave rise to a number of appeals from bodies representing particular academic disciplines. Most concerned the proposed allocation of cost centres to price groups, but some related to problems with the structure and definition of the cost centres themselves. In particular, there was ambiguity in the definition of some. This could have led to different levels of funding for similar activity, and difficulties in assigning certain departments to a single cost centre.
16. The cost centres define the lowest level at which information can be matched with the HESA returns on staff, students, and finances. The method which institutions choose to map their own organisational structure to these cost centres will therefore have implications for all three HESA returns. This document provides guidance on how institutions should map their academic departments to the cost centres shown at Annex A, and invites them to revise their current assignments.
17. Institutions’ 1998 Higher Education Students Early Statistics (HESES) returns should be based on these assignments, and should be consistent with their returns.

18. Main changes since HEFCE 97/25

19. During the last year review studies have been carried out in two subject areas:

20. a. Communication, cultural and media studies (cost centre 30).

    b. Education (cost centre 34), sports science and leisure studies (cost centre 38).

21. The purpose of these studies was to define criteria for institutions to follow in making their student returns in the 1998 HESES survey, so that similar activities are consistently allocated to the correct price group.
22. The outcome of the review for cost centre 30 proposed that it should be redefined to incorporate all provision related to communication, cultural and media studies. This can include the study and practice of TV, radio, film, video, photography, animation, multi-media, journalism and other media-related studies.
23. Cost centre 30 will continue to be titled ‘Librarianship, Communication and Media Studies’. However, HEFCE-funded institutions should assign Librarianship to cost centre 25 ‘Information Technology and Systems Sciences’. Librarianship remains in the title because the cost centre classification is UK-wide: Scottish and Welsh institutions will continue to return Librarianship within cost centre 30.
24. All departments of education including any activities that involve the training of teachers should be returned to the Education cost centre (34), regardless of any other subject considerations. Departments of physical education or sports science that are mainly providing teacher training should continue to be assigned to the Education cost centre. Departments of sports science or leisure studies not engaged in teacher training should be assigned to cost centre 38.

25. General principles

26. A cost centre should group together activities or operations with similar characteristics and broadly similar patterns of costs, so that comparisons can reasonably be made between institutions. The five fundamental criteria for grouping departments into cost centres remain unchanged:

27. a. Similar cost structures for teaching.

    b. Similar cost structures for research.

    c. Similar patterns for capital expenditure.

    d. Academic coherence in terms of the academic disciplines of staff.

    e. Similar rates of funding for research grants and contracts.

28. Cost centres should comprise groups of staff whose attributes and activities collectively satisfy all the above criteria. These groups should be assigned to the cost centre that best describes most of their academic activities. In the case of support staff, it should describe the activities of those they support. In many cases, the journals to which individuals submit their research papers, or the subject codes assigned to their teaching units, should provide a good indication of how to classify their academic activities. The provision of dedicated facilities and specialist equipment should also be taken into account.
29. Whether specialists in one particular subject, such as management, are included in another cost centre, say engineering, may vary according to the academic programmes and organisational structures within an institution. We cannot give precise guidelines on how this should be reported for the following reasons:
30. 1. Organisational structures across the sector are diverse and complex.
    2. Similar academic programmes are delivered in many different ways.
    3. The classification of academic disciplines may not be mutually exclusive.
    4. Statistics derived from these data will be used for a variety of different purposes.
       
31. There may be a case for grouping together some disparate or lower cost activities to save the costs of identifying, monitoring and reporting income and expenditure separately for a small group of staff. This will only be acceptable where the numbers are small and do not seriously distort the statistics. The proportion of the FTE student and staff load will be a principal measure of whether or not there is a material effect on the outcome.
32. Where uncertainties exist, institutions are advised to make academic judgements about how their staff should map to these new cost centres. They should also take account of current practice across the sector and the unit cost comparisons that will supplement this document.

33. Splitting departments

34. Where a department is to be split between cost centres, institutions should prepare documentary evidence of the criteria used to determine the split. We do not ask institutions to submit these documents at this stage, but they may be needed later for auditing. In such cases, there are three possible approaches to preparing the HESA Finance Record:

35. a. The costs for a department may be split into cost centres in proportion to staff effort. For example, if an electrical engineering department includes staff who undertake teaching or research in mathematics, then the proportion of effort in mathematics would need to be estimated. If it was say 20 per cent, then 80 per cent of the expenditure (academic staff costs, other staff costs and other operating expenses) would be returned under cost centre 20, electrical, electronic and computer engineering, and 20 per cent under cost centre 24, mathematics.
    

    b. Different categories of costs may be split into cost centres in differing proportions. For example, staff costs may be allocated according to estimated staff effort, and non-staff costs according to student numbers. Using the above example, this might result in an allocation of 25 per cent of staff costs and 15 per cent of non-staff costs to the Mathematics cost centre.
    

    c. Within the department, individual academic staff costs, other staff costs and other operating costs may be assigned to a specific cost centre. All such expenditure within the department would then be summed, and any faculty costs which could not be directly allocated to cost centres would be apportioned, to arrive at expenditure figures allocated to each cost centre.

36. Where staff have duties in both academic departments and central non-academic cost centres, the basis on which the costs are apportioned will depend on the contract for each member of staff. If someone is contracted to perform 80 per cent of their duties in academic departments and 20 per cent in non-academic departments, then the costs should be split accordingly between the academic cost centre(s) and the non-academic cost centre(s). If they are not contracted to perform non-academic duties and their primary function is teaching and/or research, then all the costs should be attributed to the academic cost centre(s), regardless of any other functions they may perform.
37. Whichever approach is adopted for the Finance Record, institutions must assign individual members of staff to specific (primary) cost centres for the Individual Staff Record. They must also indicate which cost centres provide input to individual years of courses/programmes of study or modules for the Individual Student Record.

38. Quality checks and audit

39. As usual, we will audit the activities of academic staff and their assignment to cost centres. Institutions should notify us of any changes that may have a material effect on our funding allocations. Institutions must also ensure that they comply with the criteria for allocating certain activities to higher cost price groups. If they fail to comply with these criteria, or make other inappropriate assignments, we may adjust funding retrospectively.
40. We may ask institutions for further evidence to support their assignments. All assignments will be checked for consistency with other data sources, and compared with returns from other institutions engaged in similar activities. We are committed to ensuring that our funding systems are transparent, so we will require institutions to justify or correct any isolated anomalies that emerge. We will also regularly review the assignment of cost centres to the price groups used for funding, to ensure that our funding decisions are supported by the underlying data.

41. Additional guidance on particular cost centres

    Clinical Medicine (1) and Clinical Dentistry (2)

42. Institutions should only assign departments to these cost centres if the departments include a large number of medically or dentally qualified university-funded clinical academic staff, who hold honorary contracts with the NHS. More than 50 per cent of the total staff teaching time must be provided by these clinical staff. Students must also be on courses that are normally taught in a clinical environment, and have very high costs similar to the clinical unit of resource.

43. General Sciences (15) and Other Technologies (22)

44. We are discontinuing the use of these cost centres because of difficulties in ensuring consistency between institutions. Departments previously assigned to these cost centres should now be assigned to the cost centres that best describe their principal activities.

45. Computer Sciences (20, 25, 39)

46. Computer science departments that meet the criteria listed in Annex B should be assigned either to cost centre 39, Computer Software Engineering, or to cost centre 20, Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering. Departments should be classified as Computer Engineering and assigned to cost centre 20 if they are mainly engaged in activities that include a substantial laboratory or workshop component involving the design and physical construction of electronic hardware. The FTE student load returned in cost centre 20 should be clearly oriented towards teaching practical engineering skills that will enable students to design, construct and test computing circuits and devices.
47. Departments meeting the criteria listed in Annex B, but whose activities (as measured by student load) are oriented towards teaching software engineering skills should be assigned to cost centre 39. Any remaining IT-related activities not meeting the criteria should be recorded under cost centre 25, Information Technology and Systems Sciences.

48. Psychology and Behavioural Sciences (7)

49. All departments of psychology should continue to be returned in cost centre 7, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences. With the help of subject advisers, we are collecting supplementary information so that we can identify and fund the high cost experimental elements of this discipline at the rate for science subjects.

50. Librarianship, Communication and Media Studies (30)

51. This cost centre is redefined to incorporate all provision related to communication, cultural and media studies. This can include the study and practice of TV, radio, film, video, photography, animation, multi-media, journalism and other media-related studies. Cost centre 30 will continue to be titled ‘Librarianship, Communication and Media Studies’. However, Librarianship should be assigned to cost centre 25 ‘Information Technology and Systems Sciences’ (see paragraph 17).

52. Education (34), Sports Science and Leisure Studies (38)

53. All departments of education including any activities that involve the training of teachers should be returned in the Education cost centre, regardless of any other subject considerations. For example, an education department that specialises in training chemistry teachers should be assigned to the education cost centre rather than to chemistry. Departments of physical education and sports science that are mainly providing teacher training should continue to be assigned to the Education cost centre.
54. Departments of sports science or leisure studies not engaged in teacher training should be assigned to cost centre 38. They should not be assigned to a ‘science-related’ cost centre unless specific approval has been given by the HEFCE.

55. Returns
    

56. Amendments to the current assignments, or notifications of no changes should be returned by 18 December 1998 to:

57. Keith Harris
    Analytical Services Group
    HEFCE
    Northavon House
    Coldharbour Lane
    Bristol BS16 1QD
    

Annex A

The 40 academic cost centres

Annex B

Definition of computer engineering (hardware and software)

1. The following definition of what constitutes computer engineering was prepared by a panel of subject advisers and circulated to all heads of computer science departments in July 1997. The criteria describe attributes and activities associated with high cost provision that are believed to be equivalent in cost terms to other engineering activities. The range and depth of the student experience on those courses which are to be classified as computer engineering must satisfy both the qualitative and quantitative criteria described below.

Computer engineering

2. The engineer in any aspect of computing is concerned with the specification, design, implementation, maintenance and testing of a package, language or system, rather than the mere use of it. The engineer works to professional standards and within a code of ethics. The engineer is concerned with how things work ‘behind’ the interface, and how they can be made to work more cheaply, reliably and effectively. While the academic engineer uses multiple applications, his or her aim is to abstract and experiment with the general principles which transcend all of them.

Funding computer engineering as a laboratory subject

3. The following are criteria which enable computer science departments to be funded as group B (laboratory-based science, engineering and technology disciplines). Such departments will submit a return to HESA under cost centre 20 (Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering) or cost centre 39 (Computer Software Engineering). Departments whose activities do not meet these criteria will continue to be funded as group C (part-laboratory disciplines), and should submit a return to HESA under cost centre 25 (Information Technology and Systems Sciences).

4. Departments funded as group B must have at least two-thirds of their teaching activity in a broad range of engineering-type computer science. Teaching activity should be measured in terms of FTE load; a ‘broad range’ is defined as at least seven of the categories listed below. The following list of topics is part of the wider definition of computer engineering, when taken in the context of the above statements and supported by laboratory work.

a. Computer hardware.

Specification, design (via CAD), simulation, verification, construction and testing of the hardware of computer systems using logic, memory and interconnection technologies. (Simulation is a vital tool of every practising engineer; it is taught in all engineering departments and has a significant laboratory basis. However, not all simulation is engineering.)

b. Computer architectures.

The attributes of individual computer systems as seen by software; the design, organisation and operation of the component parts of a computer system (including real time systems); hardware/software trade-offs; multiple processor systems; models of computation; techniques to enhance performance; performance estimation and measurement.

c. Computer communications, networks and distributed systems.

Network protocols, protocol stacks, client-server models, authentication, authorisation, compression, quality of service, security systems, error handling and fault tolerance, encryption, signalling and switching, distributed object systems, enterprise systems, network administration and management, that is running servers.

d. Distributed, parallel and high performance computing.

System architectures, processor interconnect systems, concurrency control mechanisms, application decomposition, resource management, performance measurement, algorithms.

e. Design and implementation of systems software.

Operating systems (including real-time systems), configuration management, software for concurrent computing, programming language design and implementation, modelling and simulation.

f. Software and systems engineering to cover the whole of the system life cycle.

CASE tools, formal methods, requirements analysis and specification, design (including architectural design), implementation, programming paradigms, programming models, tools for programming, software re-use, verification, assessment and evaluation, software and data re-engineering, performance evaluation and software metrics, evolution, maintenance, project management.

g. Algorithms, data structures and data management in the context of software engineering as laboratory-based experimental programming.

Design, analysis, complexity, efficiency.

h. Logical and semantical foundations of computation, theory of concurrency, Petri nets.

Only if computing-intensive tools are used to animate the theory, such as the concurrency workbench, theorem provers and model checkers. (Animation, in this sense , is graphical simulation to support and refine analysis, which may be linked to code template generation.)

i. Artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Computer vision, speech and natural language processing, automated reasoning, machine learning, adaptive systems, cognitive modelling, knowledge engineering, design and implementation of knowledge-based systems, modelling and development of knowledge-based systems applications, constraint handling, heuristics, case-based reasoning.

j. Computational Intelligence

Neural computing, genetic algorithms, fuzzy computing.

k. Intelligent robots, control systems, real time systems and experimental engineering applications.

l. Design and implementation of graphical and sound systems.

Computer graphics, image processing, large scale visualisation, sound analysis and synthesis and virtual reality systems, digital signal processing, animation.

m. Human computer interaction engineering.

User interface design, construction and evaluation, interactive systems design, computer supported co-operative work, multi-media, input/output devices, process visualisation, usability analysis.

n. Design and implementation of databases and information storage and retrieval systems, modelling and implementation of databases, and information storage and retrieval systems applications.

Only where this involves some or all of the following features: large scale data, efficiency considerations, evaluation of underlying techniques, support for a variety of data types, distributed databases, database architectures, continuous operation, security and recovery of information, storage of temporal and spatial data, concurrent access, controlled access, data mining, design and implementation of systems to process electronic documents and hypermedia.

o. Dependable computing, software reliability, safety critical and security systems, cryptography.