HE Provider Data: Finance – Open data release 2020/21
Total income for UK HE providers in 2020/21 was £44.0 billion with expenditure of £42.4 billion.
View HE Provider Data: Finance
Of the 274 HE providers included in the 2020/21 data, 195 reported a surplus for the year and 79 reported a deficit.
Tuition fees and education contracts accounted for 53% of HE providers’ income in 2020/21. Research grants and contracts made up 15% of the sector’s income with funding body grants accounting for 14%. 56% of expenditure was on staff costs, with 2% on interest and other finance costs.
As well as income and expenditure, today’s release includes balance sheet information showing current assets of £26.1 billion for HE providers in 2020/21, and capital expenditure data showing a total spend of £4.2 billion. Further tables show providers’ sources of income, categories of expenditure, cash flow, and senior staff pay.
Today’s release is accompanied by a new User guide that explains what is shown in each table to help users interpret the data.
Notes
- Twelve providers’ finance data was not finalised by the cut-off date for publication and are not yet included in the 2020/21 finance open data. Data for these providers will be included in a future update to this release:
- Assemblies of God Incorporated,
- HULT International Business School Ltd (31/07/2021 year end),
- Inchbald School of Design,
- London School of Commerce & IT Limited,
- Nazarene Theological College,
- Paris Dauphine International,
- Richmond, the American International University in London, Inc.,
- Royal Academy of Dance,
- Spurgeon's College,
- University Academy 92 Limited,
- University of Buckingham,
- Waltham International College Limited.
- Different HE providers use different financial year-end dates. The 2020/21 data includes providers with year end dates of 31 August 2020 to 31 July 2021.
- See Definitions: Finances for full definitions of terms used in the release and explanation of the coverage of statistics.
- To fully analyse the finances of an individual HE provider please refer to that provider’s own published financial statements.
- See Upcoming data releases for a schedule of Official Statistics releases from HESA.
- HESA cannot accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived from the data by third parties.


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