Costing postgraduate taught programmes

We are currently looking to understand in more detail the costs of postgraduate taught programmes. So we are running a project that will use the existing method for costing institutions’ activities – the Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) – to develop our understanding in this area.

Aims of the project

In view of our new approach to funding teaching, we will continue to provide extra postgraduate funding from 2013-14. This responds to the absence of any student finance arrangements similar to those at undergraduate level.

But we are also looking to develop a new funding methodology, that will apply from 2015-16. This is the first year of the next scheduled review of government spending, and the first year for potential postgraduate students who have been through the new undergraduate finance system.

The project will support the development of this new methodology.

About the project

We are working with a number of institutions that reflect the diversity of postgraduate providers.

The project will consider all of the postgraduate courses that institutions report to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This includes:

PG Cert
PG Dip
taught master’s.

But it excludes postgraduate research students who are funded through our funding method for research, and integrated master’s (the fourth year of undergraduate programmes). The project will also exclude regulated postgraduate programmes (PGCE, architecture and law).

We have appointed KPMG to lead this work, and we expect them to report on initial findings in April 2013.

We will link the outcomes from the study to the current review of TRAC, to reduce the reporting burden on institutions.