How much does teaching cost?

In wider conversations about university funding cost, price, and value are often used interchangeably. Alex Wilshaw tries to disentangle the cost of delivering higher education

Alex Wilshaw is Programme Leader for forensic anthropology at Liverpool John Moores University

Most current discussions about fees and higher education funding focus on the cost and debt burden for students, the value for taxpayer, whether or not tertiary education adds value to the economy, and the financial challenges for universities related to fee stagnation.

I read a BBC article recently which covered all of these things. However, something really stood out, and that was a quote from a student: a fee rise would make her “really annoyed”, she said, “I am getting a lot of teaching – but I’m not getting £10,000-worth (i.e. £9,250-worth)”.

I agree that fees are already high, I don’t think students should be paying fees at that level, and a fee rise would make me really annoyed too, but is this student really not getting her £9,250’s worth?

I think we have an issue of perception about what things actually cost, which is exacerbating the debate because not only do people think fees are high, they also think that university is overpriced and often those frustrations are directed not at fee policy, but at the universities themselves.

But high cost and high price are not the same thing. We are regularly conflating terms, and it is affecting how we discuss and debate the issue of university fees. The cost is not the same as the price, and value is another question entirely.

Defining terms

Value relates to the worth of something, the usefulness, or whether something is important in life. It can relate to the individual, the state, wider society… the list goes on. A university education might be valuable in terms of economic gains, but it also has value in terms of how a person understands the world, interacts with it, how it changes their lives. Value is subjective. It is, to some extent, intangible. The value of a university education pervades in a way that cannot necessarily be seen or measured.

Next, to price. Price is rarely referred to in fee discussions, but it is actually what is meant in most cases. Fees are not how much a degree costs; fees are the price of a degree. Sound confusing? Well, price is the amount given in payment for something, whereas cost is how much money has been used to produce or deliver it. Not the same thing. The price of a degree is very simply £9,250 per year. That is the cost to the student. It is not how much money was used to deliver that student’s education.

So, what is the cost? Well, I tried to calculate the total cost of running my standard, 40-hour, semester-long, second year module in a science-based subject. It is more than just a back of the envelope estimation, but by no means comprehensive, and came out at £25,807 for the whole shebang:

ItemOutlay CostAnnual cost with depreciation (5 years)Total
Lecturers£13,148n/a£13,148
Demonstrator£1,058n/a£1,058
Technical Support£2,621n/a£2,621
Lab Cleaning Support£800n/a£800
Office/Timetabling Support£698n/a£698
Second Marker Costs£780n/a£780
Resources£18,970£3,844£3,844
Lab Workbooks£640n/a£640
Computer Equipment£6,500£1,300£1,300
VLE/Software£1,402n/a£1,402
Consumables (paper, gloves, printing)£116n/a£116
Total cost ("cheap" module)£25,807
Total cost ("expensive" module including field trips)£42,660
Annual tutorial cost per student (staff hours only)£510

Here, staff costs are calculated using employee costing for the university and allocated workload model hours for the module. Not including utilities (electricity, water, aircon), room costs, depreciation lab refurbishment, building costs, IT staff support costs, annual curation and management of the osteological collections.

The cost of a year, per student

Now, what if we were to scale that up to cover all six modules that a student studies each year? That would come to £154,842. But, when it comes to teaching, I’m a pretty cheap date. I use no expensive equipment, no chemicals, no field trips, and God forbid a residential field trip. As far as modules go this one is at the lower end of costings.

If I change it up to reflect a more costly module, by throwing in two field trips – relatively common in modules related to nature or biology – or substitute my callipers for microscopes, plus associated consumables and technical support, the cost comes out (not by design!) at £42,660 in both cases. Let’s say each year has three low-cost and three high-cost modules (although I would say it’s more like two low and four high) then we get £205,401. This is the cost of running a year’s worth of teaching for the class.

Now for the tricky bit, how much that teaching costs per student depends on the class size and that will vary year on year. Once calculated, we can also add on small group and individual tutorials at £510 a year per student. Table 2 gives an estimate of what the contact teaching for one student actually costs to deliver, for a range of class sizes. The final columns show what remains of their fees after this cost has been taken away.

Class SizeNotesAnnual Teaching Cost Modules + TutorialAnnual Fee Remaining (after module and tutorial costs)
3 low, 3 high2 low, 4 high3 low, 3 high2 low, 4 high
18My smallest class£11,400£12,164-£2,150-£2,914
28Last year£7,908£8,490£1,342£760
35This year£6,423£6,888£2,827£2,362

In smaller classes, student fees are in deficit to basic teaching costs by more than £2,000, and in the “best-case” scenario there is about £3,000 remaining after teaching outlay.

Ha, ha, you cry – so some students are being overcharged for their education!

And the rest

Well… no, not really. Outside of basic teaching delivery costs, we also have to consider that students have access to a whole host of other benefits and services. Subsidised gyms, 24-hour libraries, loan laptops, free one-to-one tutoring support, a university counselling service that can get you in before the NHS referral letter from your GP has even been sent. In addition, the university has other non-student facing overheads to cover. Table 3 gives a smattering of these and I’m sure I’ve missed some. I’m not even going to attempt to cost in all that.

What Students’ SeeWhat Students’ Don’t See
Academic Support TeamAdmissions, Recruitment & Outreach Team
Accommodation TeamBuildings, Maintenance & Refurbishment
Advice & Wellbeing TeamDiversity & Inclusion Team
Careers TeamDomestic Services Staff
Catering Facilities & Staff (subsidised)Estates Management Team
Chaplaincy (Imam, Priest, Rabbi)Executive Leadership
Computer Facilities (inc. specialist hard/software)HE Quality Control/Chartermarks/Access Plans
Consumables (toilet paper to print cartridges)HR Department
Counselling TeamIT Department
Disability TeamFinance Department
Gym & Sports Facilities (subsidised)Occupational Health Team
Gym & Sports StaffResearch & Evaluation Team
Hardship GrantsResearch Support
Induction ActivitiesStudent Governance
International OfficeStudent Registry
Journal & Ebook AccessTeaching & Learning Team
Student Society FundingTraining & Development Team
Library Services TeamUtilities (Electricity, Gas, Water, Tax)
Libraries & Library Resources (24hour access)
Money/Finance Advice Team
Programme & Subject Leadership
Reception Staff
Scholarships
Security Staff
Software Access & Licences
Student Union Space
Work/Study Abroad Team

Factor all that in and the reality is that the student I quoted earlier probably isn’t getting £9,250 worth of education, she is probably getting a lot more. I mean, that shouldn’t really be surprising given the academic level, and that private primary school fees are now, according to The Times, on average £15,324 a year (and that’s before the new VAT changes came into play!)

Universities probably need to be better at demonstrating what a university education actually costs so that students better understand the price they are paying. This might help to shift frustrations about potential fee rises towards policy makers and the funding model,, and away from demanding universities deliver more, when they are already in financially precarious situations..

10 responses to “How much does teaching cost?

  1. I would caution anyone delivering STEM/hard science courses to be very clear about just how many ‘bums on seats’ are required to make a course economically viable, and if like my University they use ‘taught’ courses (humanities) to help cover STEM costs, those students are subsidising STEM students, the VFM issue can be very hard to justify.

  2. I agree that cost, value and price get conflated.

    A discussion of how much teaching costs needs more than a passing mention of how much research costs, as in many Universities, teaching income subsidises research, rather than the other way around.

    Also, how visible that research is to students will depend on the institution so it won’t always be in the “What Students’ Don’t See column”.

  3. I completely agree that it’s important to distinguish value, price and cost. But I don’t agree with the definition of price as £9,250 per year. We are obviously talking about home students in England here, where the “price” – the amount a student actually pays – is determined by the workings of the student loan system, and cannot therefore by definitively stated for 40 years after they graduate. The price they pay will depend on their future earnings and future rates of interest. That means the actual price students pay ranges from zero for those who never meet the earnings threshold, to substantially more than £9,250 per year for those who repay the full debt but do so relatively slowly and therefore accrue more interest in the meantime.

    I would argue that as well as value, price and cost, there is a fourth figure at play here: the amount a university gets to fund the teaching and the student experience it provides to each student. It is this figure, not the price, that is £9,250 per year. This is a very topical distinction – if (big if…) there is to be an increase in the fee level, it’s critically important that future students realise that the figure that is being increased is the “money my university gets for my education” figure – presumably a good thing. That may in turn have an impact on the price they eventually pay but only if they would otherwise one day earn enough to pay off their loan in full.

  4. A quick look on the web shows that online tutoring for home schooling is > £8,000 per year. So, closely equivalent to university tuition fees for a wholly online experience teaching up to level 3 – by this comparison universities are providing excellent value with campus life and in-person teaching at more advanced learning levels. I am always bemused why ~£9000 per year is seen as a bargain for education prior to university but then is ‘extortionate’ once students progress beyond A-levels.

  5. If we compare the UK to othe countries in the world, universities are extremely expensuve here in terms of actual cost per head. We are the third most expensive country in the world after the USA and Luxembourg.

  6. My recent article in the THE (16th Sept 2024) which points out the deterrent effect of the euphemistic language used in student finance reiterates, as per previous commentators, the reality that for most people who take it the student ‘loan’ should not be viewed as synonymous with debt – instead it is really a tax whereby 87% of students make zero or only a modest contribution toward its cost. Therefore, the cost of education for most students is purely notional and the claim it is costly or that it represents poor value for ‘money’ can be considered a modern mythology in the making.

  7. “I am getting a lot of teaching – but I’m not getting £10,000-worth”

    In the same vein, I recently overheard a group of our students discussing fees and one comment really surprised me: “I can’t believe they make us pay £9K for first year when it doesn’t even count towards the degree!”

  8. The article and comments above explain some of the complexity involved. No wonder it is difficult to have a sensible debate about the cost of delivering a specific undergraduate degree course at a specific University.

    This problem will never go away until we abolish a fundamental lie at the base of the issue, by which I mean the fixed £9,250 price per year per student used to allocate the money given to every university and the amount “charged” to every student who gets given a loan, regardless of the true cost.

    Cross subsidies must also be prohibited as they also hide the true cost.

    The real costs need to be used to calculate the annual price charged for every course at every institution. If this were done, we would probably see the lowest price for desk based subjects below £6,000 a year and the highest over £20,000 a year for subjects like medicine and engineering.

  9. I may be wrong here but, is there not additional teaching grants (in addition to the current 9250) given to Universities based on the subjects they teach that may be more expensive to teach. I think the OfS provides about £1.5Billion as teaching grants – each universities slice of the cake depends on the subjects they teach. Medicine for example attracts the most funding from this model…..

    The staff student ratio is also worth considering here. I teach one class with 190 students!

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