Counting the cost

Quality assurance accounted for 4 per cent of university expenditure last year.

English universities spent £1 billion on quality assurance in 2013-14, according to research by KPMG, a large accounting firm.

Most of the money went on paying academic staff to complete quality checks and the cost of using university office space. The average English university spent to £887,000 on employing 8.4 full-time members of staff working on quality assurance, and the cost of employing senior staff in the senate or academic board was estimated at £63,000 per institution. External examiners’ fees and Quality Assurance Agency and Office of the Independent Adjudicator subscriptions added to the bill.