Student Affairs – who gets the most money?

The recent review of spending on student services (which can be found here) has yielded some interesting information on where colleges are spending their money. From the €1500 student charge, around €370 goes to what we would normally consider to be student support services. Around €220 goes on exams and registration, and €750 goes on academic services – Library, Information Systems, etc.

By combining the data from the review with the analysis from a 2007 study, we came up with the following breakdown of how that €370 is spent.

It’s not surprising that Sports are on top, given the size and scale of the facilities that they usually manage. However, it is unexpected to see student societies languishing on the bottom, given their positive impact on student engagement. One explanation is that in some of the smaller colleges, societies are funded through the Students’ Union, and so their funding may be understated. Similarly, Student Health Centres are usually ranked as the most important service by students, so their funding might be expected to be higher. However, several colleges have recently introduced charges for their Health Centres, which might explain the relatively low funding. It’s also interesting to consider what those figures would have looked like 15 years ago (access, disability and mature student support would have been largely absent for a start).

One final note – the next graph shows the growth ofthe student charge over the years. All those people who warned against the introduction of the charge as the “thin end of the wedge” in 1995 will probably take cold comfort in being proven correct.