Accounting for the Cost of Central Support Services in UK Universities: A Note

Abstract

A significant part of the total cost of a university is spent on central support services. Traditionally, this has been funded by top-slicing the various sources of income and, although universities do attempt to ascertain the ‘full cost’ of research and consultancy services for pricing purposes, this practice does not always extend to attempts to determine the ‘full cost’ of academic departments. This survey examines the extent to which universities rely on top-slicing to recover the cost of central support services or use alternative approaches such as cost allocation, or service level agreements, or internal market prices or even devolution, as far as possible, to faculties. Each of these alternative approaches has been a feature of attempts to achieve better control of, and value for money from, central support services in other parts of the public sector, and yet these have not been widely implemented in universities.