What is TRAC?

The Government's Spending Review of 1998 granted additional funds to Higher Education, but also imposed conditions upon Institutions to transparently report their costs. The Transparent Approach to Costing (TRAC) is the method by which Higher Education Institutions fulfill this obligation. It requires that the expenditure shown in the University accounts be allocated in full to the activities of Teaching, Research and Other, and within those activities to the underlying academic cost centres.

To date, TRAC has shown that research is, in fact, under-funded, when full economic costs are calculated. This has led to the proposal that the reporting of TRAC, which is currently at institutional level, should be extended to project level.

The purpose of project level reporting is to ensure that, taking one year with another, HEIs recover the full economic cost of the research projects they undertake and therefore, that their research programmes are sustainable.

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