Student Load Management

Student load management involves planning for anticipated student enrolments, feeding these projections into the University's budget process and monitoring and reporting on actual student numbers.

PQU's role in Student Load Management

PQU's role in this process includes:

• Developing projection models to manage Commonwealth Supported load. This involves estimating continuing load and 'turnstile targets' (offers to commencing students) to achieve student load and enrolment targets agreed between the University and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. (DEEWR).
• Developing projection models to manage full-fee load, projecting pipelines and developing intake scenarios
• Developing new approaches for predicting enrolment patterns and student cohort behaviour, in accord with the functionality of the Curriculum and Student System (CASS) , maintained by the Student Administration Unit. This occurs in consultation with the Senior Executive, Deans, Faculty Managers and other stakeholders.
• Reporting on student load internally to Vice Chancellor's Committee and Council, and externally to DEEWR. PQU coordinates UTS reporting to DEEWR on student, staff and financial statistics.
• Implementing the UTS New Funding Model for determining annual budget allocations to faculties.
  The new model, which was first used to determine the 2006 budget, is based on principles such as:
  • alignment of budget allocation with the University's mission and strategy
  • unit control over budgeting and long range planning
  • cost effiiciency, and
  • the centrality of student load to budgeting.

  PQU's role involves using data in the Business Intelligence Portal to calculate faculty allocations based on the model's formula. These calculations are fed into the University's operating budget prepared and adminstered by Financial Services Unit
  

Projecting Government Funding

University income from the Federal Government is based on the number of students studying at the University and the number of subjects they are studying.

In order to project University funding and appropriately allocate resources, student numbers are converted to the unit of measurement used by DEEWR, known as Equivalent Full Time Student Load (EFTSL).

One EFTSL is a measure of the study load for a year of a student undertaking a course of study on a full time basis. A three year degree equates to three EFTSL.

At UTS, load is calculated as subject credit points taken as a proportion of standard full-time credit points.  A full year load (1 EFTSL) is 48 credit points.  A 6 credit point subject, which is the most common type, therefore carries 0.125 EFTSL (6/48).

For example, a student taking 3 subjects in Autumn semester and 4 subjects in Spring will consume 3 x 0.125 + 4 x 0.125 = 0.375 + 0.500 = 0.875 for that year.

External Link

DEEWR's Administrative information for providers - offers definitions for key terms as well as related Commonwealth policies.