How teaching funding per student in England has declined over the last decade

Our analysis tracks the ‘unit of resource’ for teaching in England – which includes both tuition fees and direct government grants – from academic year 2015-16 up to the current academic year. This highlights how universities now receive substantially less in real terms for teaching students compared to ten years ago, as funding has not kept pace with inflation during that time.

What does the analysis show?

The analysis shows that:

Real terms, funding per student per student, available to universities declined by 35% between 2015-16 and 2025-26.
In 2025-26 real terms funding per domestic student in England was 64% of the level in 2015-16.
Growing annual funding shortfalls have emerged in each year over the past decade, relative to what the funding level would have been had it kept pace with inflation.
The cumulative real terms shortfall over ten years (2016-17 to 2025-26) is £31.4bn, and in 2025-26 alone is estimated to be £6.4bn.

The analysis is based on an estimate of the Unit of Resource (UoR), a measure initially developed by the Office for Students (OfS) to track the real-terms value of funding via government grants and students’ course fees per home student in England. UUK has built on the 2019 OfS analysis and updated the methodology and timeframe.

Figure 1: Indexed evolution of funding per student, academic year 2015-16 to 2025-26

Figure 2: Accumulation of yearly shortfalls on domestic teaching, relative to what the funding level should have been had it kept pace with inflation

How is the analysis defined?

The analysis has the following components:

Government grant income for teaching

Definition: Recurrent grant income provided by the government for teaching and allocated by HEFCE (as Teaching Grants up to 2017-18) or by the OfS (as the Strategic Priorities Grant from 2018-19).

Source: HESA Finance Table 7c where data is available. From 2018-19 to 2024-25 figures also correlated with OfS allocation, based on Table A1 for each year. For 2025-26, figure is estimated based on the Secretary of State’s letter to the OfS and assuming a similar ratio of grant allocation as in previous years.

Inflation measure: GDP Deflator (based on OBR Inflation Figures March 2025).

Domestic course fee income

Definition: HE course fees for home and (where applicable, see below) EU domicile students. To reflect direct government funding for HE, figures include SLC income only.

Source: HESA Finance Table 6, ‘Summary’, ‘SLC income’, where data is available (between 2018-19 and 2023-24). For previous and subsequent years, figures projected based on the number of students.

Inflation measure: RPIX (based on OBR Inflation Figures March 2025).

Number of home students

Definition: Total Full Time Equivalent (FTE) undergraduate students assessed as eligible for home-fee status. EU students are fully included in the data until 2021-22 and their number is projected between 2022-23 and 2024-25 to reflect loss of eligibility for home fee status among new entrants.

Source: Average (where both sources were available) of DfE student loan data and HESA data on FTE UG home-fee eligible students.

How teaching funding per student in England has declined over the last decade

On this page

What does the analysis show?

Figure 1: Indexed evolution of funding per student, academic year 2015-16 to 2025-26

Figure 2: Accumulation of yearly shortfalls on domestic teaching, relative to what the funding level should have been had it kept pace with inflation

How is the analysis defined?

Government grant income for teaching

Domestic course fee income

Number of home students

Horia Teodorescu

Related

How teaching funding per student in England has declined over the last decade

On this page

What does the analysis show?

Figure 1: Indexed evolution of funding per student, academic year 2015-16 to 2025-26

Figure 2: Accumulation of yearly shortfalls on domestic teaching, relative to what the funding level should have been had it kept pace with inflation

How is the analysis defined?

Government grant income for teaching

Domestic course fee income

Number of home students

Related

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