TAS Background Briefing
Annual TRAC analysis was introduced in 1998 with the objective of determining the
costs of various activities, principally Teaching and Research. This process
highlighted the extent to which Research was under-funded, and this has resulted in
more government money being directed towards Research. In addition, the Dual
Support Review decided to retain QR alongside the grants awarded to specific
projects.
In August 2005, Full Economic Costing (fEC) came into effect. The research costs
identified by TRAC are expressed as cost-per-academic (fte) rates; the rates are then
used to cost every proposed project. For Government bodies, notably the Research
Councils, the price (ie the grant) is worked out from the fEC cost.
FEC is based on the same assumptions as TRAC: all costs have to be attributed to
the activity whether it is total research cost for the University (TRAC) or the total
research cost for an individual project (fEC). Thus the fEC cost of a project would, for
example, include investigator costs, comprising salary and relevant estates and
indirect costs.
This process makes explicit the costs of all new project proposals, which tend to be
higher than generally supposed. fEC makes them consistent and visible on a projectby-project basis.
Based on the figures for 2005-06, universities were required to extend the use of
their TRAC models to generate a per-student cost of teaching, by subject
(SubjectFACTS). The subjectFACT data are collected by HEFCE to inform the
absolute cost of teaching and the weighting between subjects.
Fundamental to the process outlined above is the collection of good quality data
about how the University uses its resources. The TRAC methodology requires HEIs
to split their costs between Teaching, Research and Other income generation, with
layers of sub-analysis along the way. The allocation to research is the basis for
calculating the fEC rates (Estates and Indirect Cost) which are used both for costing
projects and, in a majority of cases, for setting prices. The allocation to teaching
influences HEFCE’s national per-student funding rate that is paid through the
teaching block grant.
Only a certain amount of cost allocation can be achieved by reviewing data centrally,
and this approach does not work for one of the biggest costs to the University: staff
salaries. HEFCE and RCUK have both stepped up their supervisory roles, and in
2008 initiated full audit review of universities’ TRAC calculations, of which TAS is
perceived to be a very important part. At the time of Exeter’s audit, the new webbased collection system was seen to be the refinement that would keep the university
compliant with the national requirements.
With the increased importance of TRAC to HEFCE comes the usefulness of TRAC to
the university itself. TRAC allows the university a periodic activity-based analysis of
what is happening in the institution. Furthermore, TRAC provides much useful data
that is then benchmarked nationally, allowing us to measure ourselves against our
peers. This can be used to inform our strategic approach to achieving our goals.
This still requires a good quality of response from individuals and a high response
rate. The web-based collection tool, WebTAS, has made both responding and
administering the collections simpler. The rest is down to you.