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Part V - TRAC fEC

Section D: Estimating other costs

Supervising PGRs

  1. For project costing purposes, supervising and training a PGR student is a distinctly separate activity from that of managing and carrying out a research project – see PGRs.
  2. The costs of project studentships that are part of a research project are one of the cost elements of that project. It would be good practice for these costs to be included as part of the fEC of that project, but it is not a mandatory TRAC requirement to do so.
  3. Costing PGR activity and pricing PGR activity are two different things. For the time being, project studentships, and other PGR students funded by the Research Councils, will continue to be funded on tuition fees and stipends (or a doctoral training account and stipends). There is therefore no mandatory requirement to include their full costs on a project application (or on any application for a PGR student made to the Research Councils).
  4. But a full set of costs still exists for them. It is just that they are not being recognised as a basis for Research Council funding.
  5. If calculated, the costs should be shown separately. The costs should include:
    • the time of the supervisor in PGR training and development (and this would include the time of internal and external examiners, co-supervisors, etc.);
    • the indirect costs and estates costs associated with this supervisors’ time;
    • the indirect costs and estates costs associated with the PGRs themselves;
    • any direct costs incurred by the institution on behalf of PGR students (e.g. travel and subsistence, consumables, stipends).
  6. The sole exception to the requirement to cost PGR activity separately under TRAC fEC relates to some consumables. Where a sponsor will allow their travel and subsistence or consumables to be included under a research project budget heading, they need not be separately identified as a PGR cost.
  7. Fee remissions should not be included: they relate to source of funding, not real costs. The tuition fees themselves also should not be included: they are income, not a cost.
  8. The allocation of indirect costs and estates costs to PGR FTEs should use the weightings that were originally used (in the denominator) when the rates were calculated – see Part IV Charge-out rates.

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