TRAC and the Time Allocation Survey (TAS)
An overview of TRAC
TRAC is the Transparent Approach to Costing. Since 2000, TRAC has been the standard methodology used by the 165 Higher Education Institutions in the UK for costing their main activities (Teaching, Research and Other core activity), and it is increasingly informing the public funding of higher education. More information on TRAC and a useful Policy Overview by the TRAC Development Group can be downloaded at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/finance/fundinghe/trac/tdg/.
Our annual TRAC return, including the results of the Time Allocation Survey, is submitted to the Scottish Funding Council and audited by Research Councils UK as part of the Quality Assurance Validation (QAV) process, which aims to ensure the TRAC methodology is used correctly, and all costs are being calculated as robustly as possible.
The results of TRAC are beginning to have direct implications for planning decisions made at national level. Recent developments at the Scottish Funding Council to review the subject price groups for the funding of teaching have been based on TRAC data 2007-8. From February 2010 all Scottish HEIs will be using TRAC data to estimate the cost of Teaching, and this will be submitted to SFC as part of our annual TRAC return.
Scottish and UK TRAC results for 2007-8 can be found at http://www.sfc.ac.uk/effective_institutions/TRAC/transparent_approach_to_costing.aspx.
Time Allocation Survey (TAS) and web based diary
As part of TRAC we are required to collect estimates of academic staff time, as this makes up the largest single element of the total costs of the institution. The TAS exercise is solely to gain a robust estimate of the relative proportions of time spent on Teaching, Research, General Support and Other activites. TRAC methodology is then used to estimate the cost of the various activities.
The web diary covers a 24-hour period in each day, seven days a week, so for example includes any research, administration, marking and preparation done outside the standard working week (36.25 hours). However we do not collect data on the number of hours worked per week, as times are summed then converted into percentages, giving estimates of the relative proportions of the total time spent across the whole School on Teaching, Research, General Support and Other activities.
From February 2010 we request that all University staff who are contracted to carry out both research and teaching, in all Schools, complete the web diary for three periods of 2 weeks - making 6 weeks in total through the academic year. The aim is to achieve a 75% response rate in each School, which will give us reliable data for TRAC. If the response rate reaches this target, it should not be necessary to repeat the TAS again until academic year 2012-13, but lower than 75% response rates would be an issue for the RCUK auditors.