Surplus or Deficit – Who Cares? Cross-subsidy in Colleges of Higher Education

The traditional ethos of higher education encourages the provision of a broad range of academic subjects aimed at producing overall benefits to society and the economy, rather than focusing on the provision of subjects that can achieve financial viability. Under such an ethos the existence of cross-subsidy goes largely unquestioned. However, pressures on higher education funding, combined with an increasing emphasis on accountability, performance measurement and value for money mean that attitudes to cross-subsidy may be changing. This study, which concentrates on one specific sector of higher education, i.e. colleges of higher education, consists of a pilot study at one institution and a sector-wide survey and examines the extent to which the cross-subsidy of academic departments is tolerated by senior managers. Although a number of reasons for tolerating cross-subsidy were supported by the respondents, an analysis of the results reveal much lower levels of support from the finance directors of colleges of higher education than from other senior managers.