Webinar: Broke and broken? What TRAC data tells us about higher education finances

Overview

Join HEPI and the Policy Institute at King’s College London for a free webinar looking at the mounting financial pressure UK universities are currently under.

With 41% of providers in deficit in 2023-24 and forecasts suggesting this could nearly double by 2027-28, the sustainability of the higher education system has become a pressing concern for policymakers, regulators and higher education institutions alike. The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) methodology is a system designed to generate information about the costs and cost-recovery of universities’ activities. According to the latest annual TRAC data, the sector’s research activity runs at a deficit of over £5bn. But despite TRAC being in place for 25 years now, recent studies show that understanding and use of the data is limited.

Drawing on a new report by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, this discussion – hosted in partnership with the Higher Education Policy Institute – will explain TRAC data, what it is telling us, and its value and limitations in helping policymakers and institutional leaders to manage higher education towards a more sustainable future.

We’ll unpack how universities balance relatively stable but underfunded income streams against higher-margin but volatile sources – and the implications from having such a complex and increasingly fragile system for such a vital part of our national skills infrastructure.

Speakers

• 

  Professor Shitij Kapur

  Vice-Chancellor & President of King’s College London (Chair)

• 

  Professor Jackie Labbe

  Chair of the TRAC Development Group and Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, University of Gloucestershire

• 

  Professor Baroness Alison Wolf DBE

  Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London and cross-bench peer in the House of Lords

• 

  Richard Salter

  Director of Analytics, King’s College London

• 

  Nick Hillman OBE

  Director, Higher Education Policy Institute

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