Updated financial data, 2024–25
David Kernohan is Deputy Editor of Wonkhe
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We now have published financial data for 155 institutions, up from the 132 we presented earlier this month.
I’ve updated the previously presented single indicator and single provider dashboards below – with the repeated strong advice that they are a lot more useful when read alongside your providers annual statement and report (here’s a handy list) and BUFDG’s fantastic Understanding Finance: How Universities Work series.
Your provider probably should have published data (and submitted to the relevant statutory collection) by this point – the rule is five months and two weeks after the (usually 31 July) end of the financial year in question. If a statement is outstanding beyond this it usually means a delay in auditor sign-off, which could point either to a fraught back-and-forth between the university and auditor about getting the best possible presentation of the financial position and basis (you really want to be a “going concern” here) or to a capacity problem with your auditor.
Here’s the single provider version:
And a dashboard allowing you to compare a single metric across all the providers we have data for:
One question I got a lot after the first wave of published data was around a “real” surplus/deficit measure – something that could give a perspective on an “operating surplus” as opposed to a financial position that included actuarial niceties like pension provisions, and non-core income like donations, endowments, and income from investments.
There’s many ways of producing indicators like this. I’ve tried to stay squarely within the mainstream with what I have done here, which is as follows:
[Total income (1) minus investment income (4) and donations and endowments (5)] minus [Total expenditure (6) minus USS and other pension provisions (25, 26)]
What this leaves us with is income directly related to being a university on a day-to-day basis, minus actual expenditure.
It offers a strikingly different perspective on the state of the sector – most notably the loss-making positions of Oxford and Cambridge on this reckoning. While on any reasonable measure neither is going to close its doors any time soon, it eloquently makes the point that historic wealth is being gradually eroded in funding day to day business.
It’s worth comparing the chart above with the reported surplus/deficit (item 12), if nothing else as a way to demonstrate just how complex university finances can be.
Oxbridge are shown as loss making in your contrived measure of surplus but that’s misleading. Unlike other providers they are materially funded by finance income (endowments), so on the one hand they will show operating losses (which includes spending funded by endowments) while on the other they will have significant finance operations surpluses. It’s just a different business model that isn’t well captured in accounting data. Most providers would die to have their operating deficits if they were matched by financing surpluses!
Reasonable adjustments for depreciation costs and deferred maintenance costs as a proportion of their physical asset values is the unclear factor in the accounts data.
I suggest that your operating surplus calculation should exclude Capital Grant Income as that is not directly related to underlying operations,and post FRS102 (depending on accounting policies), it drops into Income in its entirety in the year it is received, distorting the bottom line