What is the expenditure of HE providers?

HE Provider Data: Finance What is the expenditure of HE providers?

18 November 2021

On this page: Income and expenditure summary | Research grants and contracts | Tuition fees | Income sources | Funding body grants

The impact of COVID-19 on the finance release:
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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, part way through the 2019/20 academic year. Depending (among other factors) on the financial year end of each provider, there may have been varying impacts of the pandemic on individual providers’ financial data for 2019/20. Those with the earliest financial year ends between August and February show data that relate to pre-pandemic activity for 2019/20. The bulk of providers have a financial year end of 31st July.

Changes to finance data from 2018/19
Changes to regulation mean that the finance data from 2018/19 onwards differs in several respects from previous years' data. Expand this box for more information.

HESA has collected and published financial statements data and associated analysis for the UK HE sector for over twenty years. During this time, HE financial data was relatively homogeneous in many respects, with financial years naturally following the pattern of the academic year. Changes to the regulation of HE in England have seen a broadening and diversification of HE provider types, and consequently a re-evaluation of appropriate collection and publication strategies.

From 2018/19 the Office for Students (OfS) has been collecting financial data from HE providers in England, including alternative providers (APs) for the first time. Note that the OfS do not collect data from further education colleges and sixth form colleges under the primary regulation of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). The data collected by the OfS has been ingested by HESA and integrated with the data for HE providers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. All tables contain a filter to allow for analysis by month of financial year end.

Providers for 2015/16 and 2016/17 academic years are all reported assuming a financial year end date of 31 July. As such, these dates will not appear in the tables.

Why do the tables only show 2020/21 data for a few providers?
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Data for 2020/21 is only displayed for a small number of English providers whose financial year-end dates were between August and December 2020. 2020/21 data for the remainder of providers will be published in Summer 2022. To see the latest available data for other providers please select 2019/20 from the Academic year filter.

This chart and table look at annual operating expenditure. For capital expenditure (on buildings and equipment) see Other financial statements.

Chart 2 Expenditure of HE providers by location, category and academic year (£ millions)

Academic years 2014/15 to 2019/20

Reset filters | Download chart data (csv) | About OC031 Chart 2

Chart 2 has not been updated with data for 2020/21 in this publication. This chart will be updated for full coverage in Summer 2022.

Expenditure breakdown by activity and HESA cost centre

Data is displayed for the cost centre indicated in the HESA cost centre drop-down box. For a total of all cost centres select '207 Total research grants and contracts'.

Table 8 - Expenditure - breakdown by activity and HESA cost centre

Academic years 2014/15 to 2020/21

Academic year